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Mentorship September 25, 2018
Don't take a break. Take a gap!
via pexels/@pixabayThere are a lot of misconceptions about what it means to take a “gap year.” Some people think it’s an excuse for directionless kids to “find themselves” by frolicking from country to country on an extended booze-infused vacation. Others picture privileged parents shelling out thousands of dollars so Junior can snag a top internship overseas. While these situations do happen, they’re not common or realistic for most people. Nor are they the only options for gap year programs.
The Gap Year Association defines a gap year as “a semester or year of experiential learning, typically taken after high school and prior to career or post-secondary education, in order to deepen one’s practical, professional, and personal awareness.”
Gap years have been common in Europe for many years and are now slowly catching on in the U.S. It’s hard to track how many U.S. students do a gap year, since not all gap year options are structured programs. However, the Gap Year Association reports that interest and enrollment are growing.
If your parent is reading this over your shoulder, or you know that they associate gap years with laziness, stress to them that a gap year is not “a year off.” Instead, a well-thought-out gap year is a strategic decision to pursue and find interests, recover from academic burnout, gain unique life experiences or all of the above.
In fact, Harvard and other top colleges even encourage admitted students to consider the option. According to Harvard College’s admissions website, each year, between 80 and 110 students defer their matriculation for a year. Other colleges allow deferment as well, provided you have a solid justification and plan for how to spend your time. A famous recent example is former U.S. President Barack Obama’s daughter Malia, who waited for her father to leave office before starting at Harvard.
While taking a gap year is not without risk, the potential benefits are huge. William Fitzsimmons and Marlyn E. McGrath of Harvard’s admissions department as well as Charles Ducey, a lecturer in psychology, assert that a gap year “is a time to step back and reflect, to gain perspective on personal values and goals, or to gain needed life experience in a setting separate from and independent of one’s accustomed pressures and expectations.”
Bob Clagett, former Dean of Admissions at Middlebury College, also wrote on the subject. According to Clagett, there is evidence that gap year students have a higher average college GPA than students who went straight to college. He also claims that gap year undergrads at Middlebury College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had a higher college GPA than expected from their high school credentials.
Now that you know what a gap year is and how beneficial it could be, let’s explore some gap year programs and ideas.
For example, AmeriCorps is a network of national service programs wholly within the United States. More than 75,000 Americans across the country participate each year in one of its three programs. These gap year programs focus on community issues like increasing academic achievement, mentoring youth, fighting poverty, sustaining national parks and disaster preparation.
The length of service ranges from three months to a full year. Benefits include student loan deferment, gaining skills and training, a living allowance and an Education Award upon the completion of service. This award can help pay for college, training or student loans.
AmeriCorps opportunities are available across the country and you can search for them here.
City Year is related to AmeriCorps and deals specifically with closing gaps in high-need schools across 28 U.S. cities. With over 11 months of service, City Year participants support teachers, provide one-on-one tutoring and lead after-school programs, to name a few. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. Bonus: City Year also has international affiliates in South Africa and the UK.
Bonus: AmeriCorps and City Year gap year programs both look great on your applications for college and grad school.
Gasp. Yes, it’s true. You don’t have to limit your gap year to one year. For example, the duration of Peace Corps service is two years, along with three months of training. Founded by John F. Kennedy in 1961, the Peace Corps enables U.S. Americans to “promote world peace and friendship” by working with local leaders and communities abroad.
Those in the Peace Corps Volunteer branch, the most well-known program with the largest amount of openings, serve in more than 60 countries. You can specialize in health, environment, community economic development, education, agriculture and youth and development. In the list of volunteer openings, you can apply for a specific opportunity and filter results based on language requirements, geographic preferences and areas of focus. Alternatively, you can choose to submit an application for consideration anywhere in the world.
Say you’ve got a high school diploma or maybe even a bachelor’s degree, and you’re wondering if you have any special skills you can offer the world. If you have native or near-native fluency in English, then the answer is YES!
I spent two gap years as a U.S. Teaching Assistant in Austria. But nobody called me by that title, because everyone knew me as “the native speaker.” As an English Teaching Assistant, you serve as a linguistic model in the classroom for both teachers and students by teaching language and culture.
According to John Knagg from the British Council, over a billion people are learning English worldwide, so demand for English teachers is high. Some programs require you to be certified in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), but others don’t. Additionally, a background in education is useful but not required.
Fulbright programs are one of the premier ways Americans can teach English abroad. Funded primarily by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Fulbright also offers other opportunities beyond teaching English. I’ve broken them down for you here.
It’s important to remember that Fulbright is selective, and there are plenty of other gap year programs for teaching English abroad. In fact, there are so many different programs out there, it’s important to make sure yours is legit. This site has a huge list of international educational opportunities along with reviews of those opportunities.
Even if you don’t want to be a teacher, teaching English abroad is a great way to gain public speaking and interpersonal skills, have an opportunity to travel to neighboring countries, improve your understanding of another culture and generally go out of your comfort zone. I loved my time in Austria. A lot. My experience was way better than the film “The Sound of Music.”
You could try WWOOFing, which is not the same thing as the dog sound. WWOOF stands for “World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms,” and it’s a loose network of organizations that began in England in 1971. Volunteers work on farms in exchange for food, accommodation and the opportunity to acquire practical skills. The length of stay is flexible and negotiated with your host. Bonus: there are opportunities in the U.S. as well.
If you don’t want to take a full year off, there are plenty of unique job opportunities that enable you to live in another country for a shorter length of time. Consider working in a youth hostel, on a cruise ship, as a summer camp counselor, as an au pair or with tour guides. These jobs will literally take you places and give you international work experience that peaks employers’ interests. You’ll have unique stories to tell and gain a lot of transferable, marketable skills along the way.
These are just some of the many ideas of what to do for a gap year. Use these ideas as inspiration for your own gap year plan, and you’ll find that the world is your oyster.
