When I graduated from high school, I didn’t feel ready for college, but I didn’t realize I had any other options. So I did what I thought I had to do: I sucked it up and sent in my applications, figuring that if I went through the motions, I’d wake up one morning with my life in order like everyone else. Now, after graduating with a next-to-useless liberal arts degree and little direction, I still don’t know what I want to do, and I wish I’d spent a little more time figuring it out before racking up all those student loans. Taking a gap year, or a year between high school and college for non-academic pursuits, has been a European custom for centuries. Maybe it’s time more American students and their parents realize the benefits of unstructured learning.
Time Out or Burn Out?
College brings intense social and intellectual stresses that most students aren’t prepared for fresh out of high school. I certainly wasn’t. As a freshman, anxiety over having to suddenly take charge of my life sent me into a deep depression, and I’m not alone. More than 40 percent of U.S. students become so depressed during their four years in college that they have trouble functioning, and 15 percent suffer from clinical depression, according to the American College Health Association. Perhaps if students took a year to mentally and emotionally prepare themselves for the pressures they were about to face, those numbers might be a little lower.
So many of life’s stressors arise from uncertainty and lack of direction. When a student figures out in her junior year that she wants to change majors or, like me, realizes after she graduates that she still has no clue what she wants to do, it can make her feel like a failure and start a vicious cycle of stress leading to bad decisions, which in turn cause more stress. Gaining a wider perspective by taking a gap year may be the only way for some people to break that cycle.
That’s the opinion of Harvard College Dean of Admissions William Fitzsimmons, author of the article, “Time Out or Burn Out for the Next Generation.” Says Fitzsimmons, “We believe that students use their opportunities in college much more effectively if they have had some chance to get some perspective and get away.”
The Real World Resume
Not only can a gap year help prevent burnout, it can also add much to college—and life—experiences. The Gap-Year Advantage authors Karl Haigler and Rae Nelson extol the benefits of gap years in teaching valuable skills like communication, problem-solving, handling stress, and managing money. In an interview with TransitionsAbroad.com editor Sherry Schwarz, Haigler and Nelson report “a longitudinal study of AmeriCorps’ participants found positive results in areas such as education, life skills, civic engagement, and employment.”
That—plus any foreign languages learned while traveling—makes for a beefy resume. In the age of networking, “gappers” also meet a wide variety of people who may prove to be beneficial contacts down the road. These are all extremely valuable attributes for a competitive, global job market.
The Dapper Gapper
Though the gap year is popular across Europe and in Australia, it’s a fixture in British culture and history. In the seventeenth century, wealthy British families began sending their sons on grand tours of Europe with the idea that a wider view of the world would be edifying and enlightening. “Perhaps gap years are just a modern version,” says Susannah Hecht, editor of The Gap Year Guidebook in the UK.
The dashing young men (and women) of England are still sowing their wild oats around the world, though they spend their time far more altruistically now. After graduating from Eton and before heading off to the University of St. Andrews, Prince William spent his gap year taking part in British Army training exercises in Belize, and teaching children in Tortel, Chile, as part of the Raleigh International program. His younger brother, Harry, worked on a cattle station in Australia and participated in the Young England vs. Young Australia Polo Test Match before traveling to Lesotho, where he worked with orphaned children and produced the documentary film The Forgotten Kingdom, and finally taking a real break in Argentina.
