The schooling system in America has always stuck to a formatted pattern with not much room for adjustment. Starting in kindergarten, you go to school for at least ten months, and then advance to the next grade the following year. Eighth grade graduation arrives a few weeks after you visited the public high school for step up day. With only a couple months of summer haze and recovery, you quickly leap into the journeys of high school. Now for people who don't enjoy the complications of academics, 12 straight years of essays and tests starts to become more of an annoyance than a benefit. The pressure to jump into college as quickly as you jumped into high school becomes real your third year into high school. It wasn't until a month after I had graduated high school that I realized I finally had an option to delay that jump.

I asked myself if going to school while I dreaded and hated it was worth it. I had no real goal or specific interest that I wanted to pursue yet, so I didn't want to spend my time in a college wasting my parents money when I didn't even know what I was doing. This isn't an uncommon feeling for people, so if you are having this problem, don't worry, it's natural. Some people want to be nurses or authors and they know exactly what they have to do to achieve that goal. Many of my friends were like that throughout high school, and I always wondered how they knew all that. How did they know themselves so well?

For people who aren't subscribed monthly to the steps you have to take to be your best self, there are options. College is a big step, and it's a step that doesn't have to be controlled by time. YOU can set the date and start the clock whenever you feel like you are ready. I realized this a month after graduating high school. I cancelled my college plans and inserted a plan to simply figure out what I wanted from life. I had been living in this black hole through narrow eyes as I only saw one or two possibilities for myself while not realizing that I had a galaxy of qualities that could make me happy and successful in my future.

Taking a gap year through a specific program is one of the most popular options young adults choose. They travel to some place for a year, or take a year to work on a specific sport they are planning to partake in in college. The year off that I took after high school was more of an impulsive, unplanned adventure. Instead of taking time to work on a sport, or become more familiar with various cultures through the art of traveling, I simply took the time to work on me. I was riddled with questions and confusion by my previous teachers and peers. Some people thought I dropped out, some people would see me and ask, "So how's the college life treating you?" and I'd smile politely and watch their eyes flood with worry when I told them my current situation. My current situation ranged from, "Oh I was living in Florida for the past few months and I don't really know what I'm doing now," to "Oh I'm totaling 77 hours a week between two jobs." Sure I didn't have a plan, but that was part of the plan.

I strongly suggest taking time to breath in between high school and college, because it is not an option that can hurt you at all. You can even become a step ahead of most college students, and you have stories to tell. Here I am a year later finishing my first semester of college with a 3.2 GPA. This is the best I have ever done in school, and I owe it to the time I took off to carve out my strengths, and pursue them in the most successful way possible knowing that I know myself better now.