The transitions that take place between your final year of medical school and first year of residency can evoke emotions from excitement to nervousness and everything in between. This time, in my opinion, should be spent working diligently during the first half of fourth year crushing your away rotations and composing your residency applications, which should then be followed by a relaxing back half of fourth year once your match list is submitted. I want to focus on the back half of fourth year once your match list is submitted because I find people doing a lot of different things during this time.
I believe that this is the time you earned to relax and take some well-deserved time off before beginning residency. This is the time to plan a trip, spend time with friends and family or even pick your favorite hobbies back up again if you have been neglecting them during your time as a medical student. As soon as I submitted my match list, I booked about twenty different golf tee times so that my friends and I could finally play golf together again.
I strongly suggest that you do not review or study for PGY-1 during the precious time off you have during the second half of fourth year. I would be lying if I told you that I did not study for my intern year. Now that I am almost through PGY-1 I can tell you that I wish I had listened to most people’s advice at that time, which was to not even think about studying until your first day as an intern. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed myself a lot during the back half of fourth year, but I did occasionally turn down invitations or activities during that time to prepare a little bit for intern year. This time was practically useless, and looking back on the time I spent studying during that second half of fourth year it did not outweigh the benefits of spending my last remaining free months doing the things I love, the same things that have been challenging to do since intern year began.
The time between ending clinical rotations and starting intern year is precious, and my biggest advice is to truly listen to everyone who has been in that position before starting intern year when they tell you not to think about studying and to do the things you love.