Making the Most of Your Summer

Hi.

 If I had started the summer how I usually start it, I wouldn't be making it very productive. The months or even year prior to every summer holiday, I find myself planning a load of productive activities and things I want to achieve or improve. The only thing that appears to let me down is time; I find myself at the end of the holidays wondering where all the time went and why I only managed to achieve a small fraction of the things I had planned. Usually, I attribute this to the fact that I was working for most of the holiday or that I had important things to do which took up much of the time. This summer, I decided to see how I could actually make it as productive as I would envisage it to be...

FIRST STEP:
Make a list. Simple as that. Make a list of all the things you want to achieve over the summer and then it's down on paper, it's there in a notebook to remind you. I always found that during the holidays I would be so busy doing things like procrastinating and feeling lost for things to do, I could never remember any of the things I had planned in the first place. Worse still, if I did remember something I wouldn't do it simply because I hadn't planned it into my day and so would wait til next week, for example, to do it.


SECOND STEP:
Print off a schedule and draw out a rough plan of when you can fit these things into your week/month/holiday period. I personally tried to find out when I was working, wrote up all the hours on my schedule and planned recreational stuff around it, genuinely works especially seeing the importance of recreation in the summer. I usually forget about it and find I either work or eat loads and do nothing all the day for the rest of the time. Nothing wrong with that if it's how you relax and unwind of course.

THIRD STEP:
There isn't one, two steps just looked a bit less impressive....

In terms of my own progress, I had several things in mind which I wanted to do during the summer, for example, one definite 'to-do' was to earn as much money as I can. This, of course, was due to my student spending habits, which had resulted in an eventual minus figured bank balance. However, I will warn you now, it does happen but the key is to learn from it and know when to say no really.. I'd like to think I've learned from it seeing the amount of effort I have had to put into working the hours to save up adequate funds for second year. Among other things, I wanted to obtain some work experience also, just to become a bit more familiar with theatre and discover more about hospital healthcare. If this is something you are looking to do, I must reiterate the cliché:

"It's who you know, not what you know"

Thus, seek out anybody you know who will be able to get you some work experience, even if you experience the management side of healthcare and what goes on behind the scenes, as opposed to just shadowing consultants. Volunteering and keeping records and write ups as evidence can help your portfolio, not just for medicine, as you will see if you're not already at University yet.

So, I hope this insight has helped, follow and keep checking my twitter feed https://twitter.com/ZaverMed for medical news and my next blog post. Be sure to subscribe if you are able to.

Ciao for now.

VZ x