But won't you be bored...?

That was the question that I was asked a lot when I told friends and family of my decision to take a year off before medical school. While the main motivation was of course to allow for time for my jaw surgery and subsequent recovery (tentatively scheduled for February/March), I also planned on... well... taking a year off. No job, no coursework.

Some people fretted that I would be bored, or that I would return to med school unprepared for the academic routine. Some hypothesized that I would eventually find something for myself to do.

Lo and behold, the doubters were (partially) correct. I stayed up until 3:30 AM yesterday reading this 26-part saga of a medical malpractice trial. Before going to bed, I counted the number of new feeds on my Google Reader that I had added just yesterday (about 5), and went over the next few books on my reading list.

I do more reading (of a serious, somewhat academic nature [or at least of sort intended for self-improvement or self-teaching]) in a week at home these days than I ever did in a week at college. Most of it is finance/economics/health/policy related stuff on Google Reader that often sends me following footnotes and PDFed articles all over the intertubes. Even when you take out the LOLCats and quick-skim CBC News articles from my feedlist, there's still a good couple of hours a day of legit stuff to get through. Plus the books and the New York Times.

So no, I'm not bored. But yes, it seems that I'm incapable of truly doing "nothing" for too long.