This study has some obvious limitations in that the total number of students who received the questionnaire is unknownbut compared to the total number of medical students in second year at the six universities, the sample size can beconsidered relatively small, although perhaps still representative
the data may be inaccurate to the average students around the UK, but they still think its applicable to gain some perspective for uni students.
Advice from students who did wish that they had taken agap year includes:‘People seemed a lot more confident and seemed to fit in at uni with ease, I think a break before starting thisintense course would have been great in hindsight.’‘More time to figure out what I actually want for life?’‘Feel like I missed out on a chance to travel and after undertaking such a long course I wish I'd let myself have abreak.’‘Life isn’t all about education and employment’‘I found coming to university really hard and think a gap year would have better prepared me’‘Only if you really know what you want to do, why, and what purpose it would serve.’
people who do gap years typically have a better transition period to uni, better prepared for the workload to come, more independent, more confident, more time to be sure of their decision, boosting employment opportunities, feeling more prepared.
Advice from students who do not wish that they had taken a gapyear includes:‘I'm happy and settled and have a nice group of friends, if I’d had a gap year I’m not sure it would be the same.’‘It would have been a wasted a year and medicine is long enough anyway’‘Whilst it would have been fun and a good experience, I am happy with where I am at the moment and don’t thinkI am missing out by not having had a gap year.’‘Totally personal choice. I don't think it is obvious who has taken a year out and who hasn't.’‘I'd rather have a gap year afterwards when I’m more mature’
rebuttal why you shouldn't
Examples of the advice these gap year students would give to current students on the effects of a gap year include:‘An amazing experience with many opportunities which may not be possible later in life’.‘Learning life skills and gain confidence before starting university’.‘Wider experience, throws you out of your comfort zone, learn life skills, more open minded, less self consciousand increases confidence.’‘The maturity and experience gained along with awareness of both myself and the world around me enabled me torealise why I wanted to study medicine and to deal with the pressure of medical school.’‘Although it was a little tricky getting back to work, the year provided invaluable life-experience and I definitelygrew up a lot (I sometimes notice a lack of this in some - but not all! - people who didn't take one)’‘I definitely think I would have dropped out of medical school if I hadn’t had time to have fun and travel
examples for the benefits of taking a gap year
Gap years may be considered unadvisable for number of reasons: perhapssome feel that students may change their minds during their gap year and then not take up their places at MedicalSchool, while others may find it unsettling or challenging to return to the routine of studying and leave the coursebefore completion. Parker, Thoemmes, Duineveld and Salmela-Aro (2015) found that “gap-year students were morelikely to drop out of a university degree”
rebuttal to why its not a good idea to not taking a gap year
Table 1. Deferred entry rates (Gap Advice UK)
data for deferred students
The Influence of a ‘Gap Year’ on Medical Students
title
Published by Redfame Publishing
Publishing
was linked to better mental health and social capabilities, including the ability to perceive nuances in interpersonal relationships
this is mostly for fiction but reading helps people socially, emotionally, and helps to process information. The more we read the better we can communicate with one another.
James Carney, an associate professor at the London Interdisciplinary School and the lead author of a 2022 study on reading and mental health.
credentials
see more awareness that reading is a resource “for our health and well-being.”
So far gathering that reading improves mental health and brain development and that's the main points to creating urgency to make the readers care and be more engage with the text.
Jill Sonke — a co-author of the new paper and a director of the EpiArts Lab at the University of Florida,
their credentials
Research indicates that reading can have a wide range of benefits for educational attainment, reasoning and comprehension skills, imagination, empathy, mental health, cognitive health and more.
Its explain the "why" reading is important.
more than 20 percent of people surveyed had a child under 9 years old, only 2 percent of those surveyed read with a child — a finding that stayed largely flat throughout the study period but that could contribute to further declines in adult reading going forward, the researchers said.
Parents are reading less to their kids and how is this going to affect them later on?
the most highly educated people were more than twice as likely to read as the least educated, and high-income people were about 1.5 times as likely to read as low-income people.
so maybe earlier the speculation about economic pressure and economic standing correlate to how people are able to spend their free-time--probably a stretch
the journal iScience, relied on data from the American Time Use Survey, which asks thousands of Americans per year to describe in detail how they spent a day. Over the 20 years the researchers analyzed, more than 236,000 Americans completed the survey.
this is how many people did this survey and there's no specifics if this is at random or carefully selected based on economic standing, age, race, etc.
“The empathy that we feel for them is actually real, and these connections with characters can be ways that we can feel less alone, that we can feel socially and emotionally validated.”
psychological benefits
Further research would be needed to confirm those theories.
not factual so moving on...
the authors suggested some possible explanations
speculating
The decline in reading could have implications for Americans’ learning, relationships and overall well-being, the researchers said.
the cause for a decline in social interaction?
Daisy Fancourt, a co-author of the study and a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London.
Dr.Fancourt's credentials
didn’t explicitly account for e-books and audiobooks
so were only considering statics from print media specifically. Got it.
latest decrease “surprising,” given that the study defined reading broadly, encompassing books, magazines and newspapers in print, electronic or audio form.
there's an array of media to be read...so where's the data drawn from?
Researchers from University College London and the University of Florida examined national data from 2003 to 2023 and found that the share of people who reported reading for pleasure on a given day fell to 16 percent in 2023 from a peak of 28 percent in 2004 — a drop of about 40 percent. It declined around 3 percent each year over those two decades.
statics (logos)