Growth Year Series: The Growth Year Slump
For many premedical students, taking time between college and medical school is no longer an anomaly. It is a normal part of the journey. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges’ 2025 Matriculating Student Questionnaire, over 70% of matriculants spent at least one year between graduating from college and entering medical school (Association of American Medical Colleges [AAMC], 2025).
Although these years have traditionally been called “gap years,” the term growth years is becoming increasingly normalized within premedical spaces. It better reflects how much development can take place during this period. These years may include MCAT preparation, research, clinical work, volunteering, travel, financial planning, family responsibilities, personal healing, or simply learning who you are outside of school.
There are real benefits to taking this time. In a small, single-institution qualitative interview study of medical students at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine, Rashid and Kibble (2021) identified themes including greater adaptability to change and failure, a clearer understanding of the “real world,” refocused goals, stronger resilience and stress management, and renewed motivation for medicine. Because the study involved a small group of volunteers from one medical school, its findings should be understood as insight into those students’ experiences rather than evidence that every student will experience the same benefits. Still, their perspectives illustrate how growth years can give some future physicians time to develop greater maturity and purpose.
Though, even a season centered on growth can begin with an unexpected low. I call mine the Growth Year Slump.
What Is the Growth Year Slump
The Growth Year Slump is the transition period that can occur after graduation, when the structure, deadlines, routines, and constant momentum of college suddenly disappear. I want to emphasize the words transition period because a slump does not have to be permanent.
After years of moving from one assignment, exam, leadership responsibility, job shift, and application milestone to the next, stopping can feel surprisingly uncomfortable. You may have a long list of goals but little energy to begin them. You may sleep more than usual, procrastinate, compare yourself with classmates, or feel guilty whenever you rest. You may even wonder what happened to the motivated student you used to be.
If that sounds familiar, please hear this in the voice of someone who has been there: you did not suddenly become lazy, undisciplined, or less capable. You may simply be adjusting to a major life transition while finally processing how tired you are.
The Growth Year Slump is my personal name for this experience, not a medical diagnosis. Persistent exhaustion, sleep changes, loss of interest, hopelessness, or difficulty functioning can also be signs that you need professional support. It is always appropriate to reach out to a physician or mental health professional when you are concerned about your well-being beyond just a slump.
My Growth Year Slump
When I graduated from Florida State University, I already had a plan for the week after graduation. I was going to begin serious MCAT studying, create my medical school list, read books about the application process, increase my work and research hours, and complete what felt like one hundred other tasks. Trust me, the list was long.
Two weeks later, I found myself in bed, endlessly scrolling through TikTok and Instagram Reels and sleeping far more than I normally would. During one of those moments when I was doing anything except being productive, I realized the worst thing a perfectionistic student thinks she can admit: I was experiencing burn out. My mind and body finally had enough time and space to process how tired they truly were.
Slumps happen because life is not a linear journey. I also believe that the lower seasons can teach us to recognize and value the higher ones. So, I sat down and revised my plan. This time, however, I was not rebuilding my MCAT timeline for the hundredth time. I was making a list of summer plans that had nothing to do with work or school.
I decided to take a real break. Not a Thanksgiving break spent catching up on assignments and preparing for finals. Not a summer break spent taking one or two classes while working full-time. I mean a real break, one that involved leaving my computer at home, submitting PTO requests, putting my phone on Do Not Disturb, and allowing myself to be fully present.
My two best friends, who had also just graduated and were experiencing Growth Year Slumps of their own, joined me. Our lives began to include Pilates several times a week, concerts in Atlanta, a cabin trip in the mountains, coffee reviews around Tallahassee, birthday trips, volleyball, tennis, walks through new parks, a book swap, and watching the World Cup while enthusiastically rooting for Colombia.
As I learned who my friends and I were outside of academics, I also became more intentional about my other relationships. My partner and I moved to a new area of Tallahassee, upgraded our apartment, took weekend trips around Florida, and even got engaged. These experiences did not pull me away from my future. They reminded me that I already had a life worth being present for.
Rest alone was not the only step that helped me move forward, but it was the first one. Once I stopped treating rest as a reward I had not yet earned, I could begin rebuilding my energy, identity, and routine with greater intention.
Five Ways to Move Through the Growth Year Slump
1. Reflect on the bigger picture
Before making another detailed to-do list, take time to recognize what you have already accomplished and consider what you want this season of life to mean. Graduation is a major achievement. It would be a disservice to rush past it so quickly that you never allow yourself to feel proud.
Journaling helped me create space for that reflection. I experimented with guided journals, daily prompts, and free-writing. Each offered something different, but the most important part was sitting in quietness with my own thoughts. No television playing in the background, no music filling every pause, and no social media telling me what everyone else was accomplishing. Just me, a notebook, and honest answers.
You might begin with questions such as: What am I proud of? What am I still carrying from college? What do I want my life to feel like this year? What matters to me beyond becoming a physician? Your answers do not need to sound impressive. They only need to be true.
2. Try something you did not have time for before
Growth years offer a rare opportunity to explore interests that could not fit into an undergraduate schedule. Try a new form of movement, take a creative class, visit a new place, read for pleasure, learn to cook something new, or return to a hobby that school pushed aside.
For me, that new thing was Pilates. One day, my best friends and I were sitting at Midtown Reader, a local bookstore and coffee shop, when we noticed a Pilates studio across the street. We looked it up, saw that an upcoming class featured music from some of our favorite women rappers, and found an offer for two free classes. We were hesitant, but we tried it. Pilates became one of the most consistent and joyful parts of my new routine.
The goal is not to turn your new hobby into another performance metric. You do not need to become the best person in the class or add the experience to your application. You are allowed to do something simply because it makes your life better.
3. Rebuild your mental health with intention
For some people, the sudden quiet after graduation allows stress that was previously buried under deadlines to become more noticeable. Supporting your mental health may include therapy, time with trusted loved ones, spiritual practices, exercise, or boundaries with social media.
Therapy has been an important part of my life since the beginning of college and has helped me work through many mental and emotional challenges. If therapy is accessible to you, consider exploring it. If it is not, look for lower-cost services, community clinics, support groups, or resources offered through your employer or former university.
Daily affirmations have also helped me interrupt the harsh way perfectionism can make me speak to myself. Remind yourself that you are intelligent, capable, strong, and worthy, even on days when your productivity is low. Your brain has heard the criticism enough. Give it something kinder to practice.
4. Build a routine for the life you have now
Your undergraduate routine may not fit your growth years. College provided class times, exam dates, campus activities, and familiar rhythms. Your new schedule may include full-time work, research, family obligations, or an application process that has no professor checking whether you completed today’s task.
Instead of trying to recreate your old life, build a routine around your current one. Start with the anchors that already exist, such as work hours, commute time, sleep, meals, exercise, and caregiving. Then add a realistic amount of MCAT preparation, application work, volunteering, or rest.
One of my adjustments involved changing the time I woke up. The best schedule is not necessarily the one that looks most disciplined online. It is the one you can sustain while protecting your health and fulfilling your actual responsibilities.
5. Return to planning slowly
Rest does not mean abandoning your goals. Eventually, you will need to decide how your growth years will support the future you want. The key is to return to planning gradually rather than trying to solve your entire medical journey in one sitting.
Begin with one or two hours on your weekly reset day. You can increase that time later if needed. During those early sessions, work from broad questions toward specific plans.
First, list your current obligations. Are you working full-time? Continuing in a research lab? Remaining involved with AMWA or another organization? Providing childcare or supporting family members? Planning a wedding, relocation, or major trip? Personal commitments belong on the calendar too.
Next, identify what you still need to complete and what might strengthen your application. This could include prerequisites, the MCAT, clinical experience, shadowing, service, research, or letters of recommendation. Separate true requirements from activities you feel pressured to add simply because someone else did them.
Then, place your important dates on one calendar. Include the application cycle you are targeting, application opening and submission dates, available MCAT dates, prerequisite course schedules, and relevant research, scholarship, or conference deadlines. Be honest about your available time, especially if you will work full-time while applying.
Finally, build backward. Start with what you hope to accomplish before the application cycle, translate those goals into monthly phases, and then decide what is realistic each week. Other applicants’ YouTube videos, Reddit posts, and sample calendars can offer ideas, but they are not rules. Your plan should fit your life.
The Growth Can Come After the Slump
Early research findings on growth year experiences offer reasons for hope. In a single-school study, Guang et al. (2020) found that taking one or more gap years was independently associated with lower burnout among surveyed medical students. More recently, Regester et al. (2026) evaluated a structured, 14-month clinical growth-year program at one dermatology practice. Among the 37 program alumni who responded, 89% believed that completing the program reduced burnout during professional school.
These findings should not be interpreted as proof that taking time away will prevent burnout for every student. Both studies had important limitations, and a highly structured clinical program is not representative of every growth-year experience. Still, they support a possibility that deserves attention: time before medical school can be more than a delay. When used intentionally, it may help students build skills, confidence, perspective, and healthier ways of navigating stress.
If you are currently in a Growth Year Slump, stay hopeful. You are not behind. You are not wasting your potential. You are moving through a transition that may require more gentleness than you expected.
Your growth year does not have to look productive every day to be meaningful. Some seasons of growth look like research, service, clinical experience, and MCAT preparation. Others look like sleep, therapy, journaling, movement, laughter with friends, a quiet cup of coffee, or finally learning how to rest without guilt.
Both kinds of growth count.
Stay tuned for the rest of AMWA’s Growth Year Series, where we will continue discussing topics such as MCAT and application timelines, planning an intentional growth year, and what growth years can look like for students completing graduate programs.
References
Association of American Medical Colleges. (2025). 2025 matriculating student questionnaire all schools summary report.
https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/students-residents/report/matriculating-student-questionnair e-msq
Guang, S. A., Eltorai, A. E. M., Durand, W. M., & Daniels, A. H. (2020). Medical student burnout: Impact of the gap year in burnout prevention. Work, 66(3), 611–616. https://doi.org/10.3233/WOR-203203
Rashid, H., & Kibble, J. D. (2021). Understanding reasons for electing gap years between undergraduate education and medical school and the impact of gap years on the student experience of medical education. Advances in Physiology Education, 45(4), 886–894. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00059.2021
Regester, R. M., Cannella, A. C., Erickson, A. R., Sayles, H., Rau, A., & Griess, A. J. (2026). Bridging the gap: Evaluation of the impact of a structured pre-professional medical education gap year on medical career pathway, competency development, and preparedness for professional school. BMC Medical Education, 26, Article 248. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-025-08501-z