As high school draws to a close, many students are interested in pursuing further educational interests but only after a gap year. A gap year is time spent away from school--an extended break between high school and college. Students choose to take a gap year for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that the student is simply burned out. They’ve been in an academic setting essentially their whole lives and while they recognize the value of furthering their education, they just need some time on the sidelines before they do that. Some students see a gap year as a way to find themselves. They want to take some time contemplating careers and opportunities before they commit to one at the college level. There are also students who want to spend a year working full time in order to save money and build a nest egg before beginning more school.
I can see the rationale in each of these, but I am not personally a fan of the gap year. I think they are momentum killers. For most students, graduating high school is the biggest lifestyle change they have faced in their lives. Graduation often means moving, it means increased work expectations and responsibilities, and it means more “adulting” in the form of paying bills, cooking, and just generally taking care of one’s self the way a parent might have done before. For a new graduate, it takes a little work, mental and physical, to get those things sorted out and to get to a point where they are comfortable doing all those things. So to me, graduating high school and transitioning to adult life, then just a year later uprooting and going through another major lifestyle change by starting college sounds like an incredible expenditure of emotional energy as a doubling of the same effort.
Many of students will work during this gap year too. In that case, it’s pretty easy to become a slave to the almighty dollar. Maybe now they’ve got a car payment, or rent, or an insurance bill, or credit card debt, or feel like they can actually afford to go out to dinner on Friday night. Maybe they say they’ll work one more semester then start school in the spring. It’s the same scenario in the spring and they wait until fall. One gap year turns into two, or three, or four. It’s just so hard to pick again and go back to school when you’ve stopped.
Finally, it’s worth noting that most high school students have pretty sharp student skills. They are used to writing papers, listing off the parts of a cell, and deriving quadratic equations. They’ll need to do these types of things in college but those skills will grow rusty as they’re not used.
There are certain students with some special circumstances for whom I think a gap year is a great fit. However, I’ve come across too many former students who just wanted a little time off after high school and are still trying to get back to school. I think most of those students would have fared far better if they had gone straight into college. If you’re committed to a gap year, make sure you have a firm plan in place to return to school after your year off and do what you can to keep some momentum for your future.
