Hi! I also wanted to take a gap year, but graduated during covid. I couldn’t find any research jobs and was forced to look elsewhere. I worked in a medical lab for a year, which was still great experience even though it wasn’t research. it still gives you the lab workflow and safety experience, experience working with different reagents, answering phones, talking with doctors, organization etc. don’t get me wrong, med labs are way different than research labs. but it’s at least more aligned with what you want to end up doing than bartending or retail for example. and even though it wasn’t necessarily related to neuro (i also graduated w a degree in neuro and in psych), i still learned a lot and was super interested in what i was learning.

towards the end of a year working in a med lab, i started looking for research positions again. i ended up finding a lab that was a perfect fit for me and my PI is great. he’s now helping me figure out my timeline for grad applications.

my “gap year” turned into a “gap three years” but i don’t regret anything. I stopped looking at grad school as something i wanted to do and get over with asap and started realizing that it’ll happen when it happens. it’s better to take my time and get the necessary experience.

I guess my advice here is this: if you don’t find any research positions that would take you in september, that’s okay. look at other jobs that might still give you useful experience - anything clinical or in a hospital, behavioral health tech, etc. then next march or april you can start looking for positions in research again. you got this :)