M4 with nothing to do, applying into IM and honestly bored/depressed with how everything is turning out

In the height of interview season and I’m entering a period of three months where I’m doing just interviews or an online elective and interviews. I won’t have my ICU rotation until March. I’m your classic top of the class, AOA, 240+ step score who didn’t get any of those top 20 interviews probably bc she didn’t have any research. I remember emailing since my spring of M1 year and throughout M3 and even into early M4 to have something on my application before ERAS was submitted. All my peers were getting papers published, submitting to posters, and seemed to find research so easily. I would be emailing everyone in our database and never get a response. Even recently a friend provided me the contact number of an attending with his directions to reach out, followed up 2x , no response. I knew I would be applying to residency with no pubs but not entering residency without it.

I feel like my post IM residency plans are limited: cardio fellowship, pulm/crit, are not within reach anymore because I’ve never done research.

I guess my questions are: 1) Can I rank any of the academic programs highly with the expectation that I would match?

2) How do I answer the “why don’t you have research” question at interviews? I don’t even have updates to give if I were.

3) Is it okay to enter IM residency without research or should I consider just being a hospitalist since applying to fellowship at that point would be a waste?

4) What else do I do besides research when all my friends are going to conferences and publishing? Any hobbies people recommend picking up (started reading again, journaling, working out) to fill the time in between prepping for interviews and going to interview socials?

I feel like I worked hard for nothing even though I have the opportunity to match. I just feel like I’m not going to my greatest potential because of this one gap in my application that I can’t remedy because no one ever wants to read my emails.