ERAS work

[hollisterdoc]

I thought when I looked into it previously that everyone had said it’s not wise to work during med school. Then I see an entire work section on ERAS. As a non-trad I have work experience but it seems lame to include something 20 years old (was a stay at home mom directly before ms1). Should I look for a job to fit in somewhere in between med school, volunteering, research, and taking care of kids?? ERAS seems ridiculously tailored to young adults with nothing to do all day but pad their resume and study. What about the rest of us who have lives?

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[GoSpursGo]

lol no of course you should not get a job to pad your ERAS. A good number of applicants have nothing in that section because they went straight through undergrad to med school. Many others have a token retail job or maybe something medical during a gap year like scribing. But nobody expects you to hold down a job on top of being a medical student. If you have nothing there it doesn’t look bad at all.

As an aside, you need to get out of the pre-med mindset that you need to volunteer and pad your CV. You got in, and really volunteering is now pretty worthless—so do it if it’s important to you or if it’s something that’s important for you to do with your family, but don’t do it because you think you need to compete with other students. Literally nobody cares. Now your job is to get good grades and do well on step 2. If you’re aiming for something competitive then research becomes important, but never at the expense of academics (or your sanity).