About to graduate high school? Do you know the exact degree you want to get in 4…5 years? Are you ready to commit to huge debt to try to figure that out? Do you know what you want to be doing the next 40 years of your working life after graduation? Have you seen the world? Have you had the chance to live on your own to really discover who you are and what your passions are, live with another culture to see how others live and view the world? If not, instead of sitting in huge college classrooms daydreaming, why not do what Brits, Australians, and many others around the world have been doing for decades…a Gap year. What is this you ask? Don’t worry, it’s slowly catching on in the USA.
Basically a gap year is taking time off from the normal schedule of life to purse personal interests while seeing the world. You can learn a language, backpack the world, volunteer, work. Traditionally it was for students graduating high school but now it has expanded to include college graduates taking time off before they begin their work careers and mid-career professionals taking a needed break to recharge their batteries.
| Recent articles by Sean Gregory of Time Magazine, Time Out: Gauging the Value of a Gap Year Before College, and Liz Roberts of NJ.com Gap-year before college good for students have highlighted the benefits and trends in students taking gap years. |
So instead of following the regular rat race like life trajectory of 4 years of high school, straight to college, graduate, straight to a job, then marriage, then kids, (hopefully a week or two of vacation sprinkled in there somewhere), retirement, then buying a Winnebago to travel in your 60’s, why not take time off after high school for yourself? Allow yourself to be independent, learn about yourself, learn about the world, discover what your passions may be. Then you can go to college a more energized and mature student ready to take advantage of everything college has to offer. True personal discovery comes when you go the opposite direction of the pack, take the road not taken. For centuries aborigines and many other groups of people have been sending their youth out on their own to mature, become adults, find their meaning.
So if you don’t know what you want to do with your life it’s okay…here’s a little secret, many recent college grads don’t either. One difference between a recent college grad and a high school grad is a high school grad has zero debt and a college grad on average has $25,000! When you graduate those bills come soon and often. We have all read about the college debt crisis right now…why rush to get in this?
College is a great and wonderful place that can help you grow and allow you greater earning potential in he future, but it’s not the only path in life and doesn’t have to start right after the valedictorian tells you to turn your tassel. If you graduate from college a year later than your peers and you both end up interviewing for the same job (maybe because it took them 5 years to graduate because they were still figuring out what they wanted and after a year of traveling you entered more focused and with a plan and graduated in 4 years) and you are able to tell the interviewer that you spent time working (maybe abroad), have traveled the world, learned another language, and have personal contacts all over the world, would that be attractive to the interviewer?
This may be the last time in your life until you retire to spend 3, 4, 5, 6 months, a year to yourself to travel the world. Why not jump now at the chance to learn a language, see the world, volunteer? Climb the mountains to see Machu Picchu, run with the bulls, learn to tango, volunteer in Latin America, visit universities older than America. Life Happens to you when you graduate and built-in excuses come up like kids, jobs, spouses, etc.
So what will it be? If time and money weren’t an issue, what 3 things would you do more of?
Study Spanish Abroad Café 