My early mid-life crisis...
By the time I had reached the second semester of my senior year of high school, I had probably been asked where I was going to college close to a thousand times. I would usually make something up or just be very vague about schools I was looking at and what I wanted to study. I did this because I honestly had no idea. Growing up, I had planned on dropping out of school, moving to Hollywood and trying to become the next Steven Spielberg. Of course, my parents weren’t in favor of this plan and by the time I turned 18, I no longer wanted to go into film. I had no clue what I wanted to do and felt that it would be a waste of time and money to enroll in school without a goal in mind. During this same semester of my senior year, I was assigned to write a research paper by my English teacher. It had to be a persuasive essay on a topic of my choice. He encouraged us to research something that we wanted to know more about, but that was relevant to where we were in our lives at the moment. Obviously, all I could think about was the crippling reality that I didn’t know what I was doing after high school and how everyone around me seemed to have a plan laid out in front of them. Besides that, I really didn’t want to be in school. I didn’t enjoy being in a classroom and felt burnt out by the time I reached my senior year. I began researching alternative paths after high school that didn’t include immediately enrolling in college. Doing this research is how my gap year experience began.
My gap year...
I came across dozens of articles, news pieces, and testimonials about taking a gap year. (A year long break between high school graduation and college enrollment) I identified with the many gap year participants I was reading about, who found themselves unsure what they wanted to do with their lives. I needed to take a gap year. After breaking the news to my parents that I wasn’t going to college right away, they made me promise that I’d go back to school after the year was over. They were also concerned that I would spend my year sitting in our basement binge-watching Netflix and eating tacos. So, I promised them I would do something with my year off that was actually beneficial. After doing some asking around, I was presented with the opportunity to do some photography and videography work. This opportunity involved traveling all over the world to film training sessions for some really awesome people that train caregivers who work with orphaned and traumatized kids. They needed promotional material for their ministry to send to sponsors and asked me to be a part of creating it. The opportunity was perfect for me. Throughout the next year, I traveled to eight different countries, met a ton of amazing people, ate a lot of different food, and learned quite a lot about the effect of childhood trauma on the brain. I would fly out for a week, two weeks, or a month, and then come home and save up money for another trip. It ended up becoming one of the best decisions I ever made.
What I learned…
When my year came to an end, I enrolled in school at the University of Cincinnati. I could write an entire separate article talking about how much I learned about other cultures and people groups during my year. I hiked mountains in Kyrgyzstan, played soccer in Guatemala, interviewed caregivers in Romania, and hung out with some pretty awesome kids in Nigeria. However, I can’t say that these experiences showed me exactly what I wanted to do with my life. What I can say is that they taught me quite a bit about myself. I began to figure out what I’m good at, what I’m bad at, what I’m passionate about, and what I’m scared of. I found myself interested in things that I had never considered as career choices before. While I didn’t have an exact career path to follow, it didn’t freak me out to go into college undecided or tell people that I was still figuring things out. Right now, I’m studying communications, but that could easily change as I’ve already switched majors two times since going back to school.
Consider a gap year…
If you’re a high school senior and you’re reading this, I’m not saying that a gap year will help you figure out everything instantly. Instead, it might change your perspective on things. Just make sure you do something. If you’re considering a gap year, I would encourage you to do something that’s out of your comfort zone. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to travel like I did, but do something that you’re not used to. You could spend the year working on a sheep farm, interning in a job field that you might be interested in, trying to start an Etsy business, or volunteering with a disaster relief non-profit. If you get out of your comfort zone, I promise that you’ll learn things that you’d never learn in a classroom.
