Having a year of experience may help you to define your research interests with a more pragmatic goals in mind. A complaint that I frequently hear from friends

Having a year of experience may help you to define your research interests with a more pragmatic goals in mind. A complaint that I frequently hear from friends who have got into academic research is that there are very few people in the world who can understand the area where they do research. Presumably, if one can focus one's research one the area that is of interest to the real world, one can find many more people to talk to, get motivated, etc.