“Oh, yeah, I took a gap year.” My programmed response whenever someone asks me how I came to be 20 years old and only going into my sophomore year of college. Saying it that way implies that I had some choice in the matter, though, so I usually follow it up with, “Or, I should say, a gap year was forced on me.” And then I say, “It’s a LONG story.”
Since I was a child, I’ve always been advanced as far as learning things and retaining information as well as applying it critically. Basically, I was a phenomenal student. Math has always eluded me, but I grasped everything else with minimal effort. I was reading at a sixth grade level in the first grade, always scored "advanced" in most of the standardized test categories in school, my name was usually the only one on the board for having won the best essay in my high school English classes back-to-back, etc. As my educational career continued, I garnered more and more academic accolades. I was the smart one no one worried about. Everyone had always told me that, whatever I wanted to do with my life, I would be able to do.
Everyone knows how important it is to encourage a child this way. Not that I needed it. I knew that I had it all together. There was nothing anyone could say to discourage me from that anyway, but their intentions were as pure as they could have possibly been. However, as I’ve since found out happens with many “child prodigies” of this kind, they go through life putting forth minimal effort because they know, in return, they’ll reap extraordinary results. I simply did not know how to try because I had never had to. I had never had to put forth much effort at anything to succeed at it. This enabled me to become passive about my schoolwork and still do very well. My security in my future never wavered. I credit this feeling of security for the unintended gap in my educational career.
When I began applying for colleges, this false sense of security really took its toll. To begin with, I only applied to my four dream schools (extremely selective and prestigious private universities) and four “safety” schools (the four most selective UCs). I didn’t even bother applying to any CSUs because I thought it wasn’t worth the effort, time or application fee if I wasn’t even going to consider going there. I knew that my academics were up to par for my dream schools, and I thought there was no way that I wouldn’t have most of my tuition paid for with scholarships due to my excellent grades and ample community service.
Getting into my dream school wasn’t the issue. I was accepted as part of New York University’s Class of 2017, and I was so incredibly excited. I had always wanted to live in a big city on the East Coast and attend a school with a progressive and diverse group of individuals. I felt like I was made to attend NYU. One thing I never considered was the price. It sounds incredibly shortsighted because it was. At $64,000 a year (I decided to look into the price after I was accepted), there was no possibility that I could attend without a few incredibly generous scholarships or grants. I was willing to take out as many loans as I could, but the schools only let you take out up to a certain amount, and after that amount, my parents would need to be approved for a Parent Plus loan. No way was that happening. My parents both had subpar credit and could not take out the loan. And because I was unaware of the CSS Financial Aid Profile that I had to fill out and turn in by February 1 to qualify for a $30,000 scholarship, the only one that I could get from the school, I did not fill it out in time for the deadline and got absolutely nothing. I couldn’t go to NYU.
By this time, either the accept/decline deadlines for the other universities I had been accepted to had passed or I realized that they would cost too much just like NYU. DePaul University was one that would cost me around $50,000 a year, but as it was my last hope before the unimaginable (not going to college at all in the fall), I decided to pursue it. It was all to no avail of course. I ran into the same issues that I did with NYU. I was crushed. I could not imagine sitting at home while my friends started their adulthoods in college, making new friends and memories while I did nothing. I tried to stay away from Facebook because seeing them document all of these moments just broke my spirit. Every time someone on TV mentioned “college” or I overheard someone talking about their future in general, the knife twisted. Not one day went by without me thinking about getting into school.
All this thought was manifested into action, of course. It was the most stressful year of my life and the hardest I’ve ever worked. I had several breakdowns mentally and physically. The number of hoops that I had to jump through just to get into another school were a nightmare. For example, for me to qualify for the Western Undergraduate Exchange discount tuition program, one of the rules was that I needed to have never attended college, which I hadn’t.
DePaul, however, had marked me as having attended their Discover Chicago class, even though I had missed the class and withdrawn. Because they had marked me as having attended this class, I needed to get them to write a letter stating that I had never actually attended so that UNR would classify me as a first-year student. DePaul responded to this request by telling me that they would only write the letter if I paid the $1,200 fee for the class because I did not withdraw before the deadline. However, I did send in my email to withdraw from the class before the deadline; they just didn’t process it because the adviser to whom I sent the email was away on other business and apparently did not have access to her email for a few days. After explaining all of this, they still insisted that they would not write the letter stating that I had never attended a class until I paid up. I worked for four months paying nearly every bit of cash that I received to DePaul for this letter so that I could get tuition at UNR discounted to a rate that I could afford. And that’s only one example of what I went through for an entire year.
Even recounting this example now stresses me out. But it also reminds me of how resilient I am. I had never been tested in this way before. After all, I was the “genius” everyone trusted would be fine. I had never put forth this much time, effort, money, sweat, tears and, yes, even blood (another story) into something before because nothing had ever required this much from me. I still can’t say that I’m exactly happy for this experience, but I am inspired by myself when I feel like I just can’t achieve something because I know a younger me rose to the occasion once, so I can always do it again.
