The Trouble with Making Students Choose What They Want to Do in Life Directly After High School

Many students in the United States and beyond are concerned that they burn out on school too easily. In most cases, they are worried because they are having trouble deciding what they want to do for the rest of their life. In order to solve this problem many students choose to job shadow different careers to help solidify their career plans, but many times job shadowing just doesn't work because these opportunities only allow students to watch. What students really need is hands on experience in a possible field of work to understand if they fully like it or not.

If any of this sounds familiar, consider taking a gap year. For those who don't know what a gap year is, it is the time period, commonly one entire academic year, between high school and college when students choose to travel, volunteer, or work full time instead of immediately entering college. Gap years are highly beneficial because they allow students to venture into the world to become self-sufficient, renew their passion for learning, and even increase their chances of being accepted and doing well in college.

A common misconception about students who take a gap year is that they're wasting their life away, not doing anything productive, and won't want to return to school. This, however, is inaccurate because of several reasons. First of all, students can take this extra year to hold a job to earn money so they won't have as much debt when they graduate. For example, if a student works 40 hours a week, makes minimum wage, and holds that job for exactly one year, they can make $14,560 or more.

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For most colleges, this is enough money to pay for one year. Programs such as World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, or WWOOF for short, allow students to travel abroad and work in exchange for room and board. This program lets students experience life as a volunteer while living abroad. Volunteers should expect to work 25-30 hours a week to earn their room and board. Programs such as WWOOF allow costs to be kept to a minimum so that students can afford to live abroad. While students are traveling or volunteering abroad, they are spending their time wisely by constantly learning. Although they won't be learning in a traditional college setting with textbooks and teacher-led lectures, students will be learning from real life experiences.

For example, look at Prince William. Prince William took a gap year and he trained with the Welsh Guards in Belize, worked in English dairy farms, visited several charities in Africa, and took part in a ten week volunteering program in southern Chile where he helped to construct a school and taught English as a foreign language. Prince William is a great example of how it is sometimes necessary to take a break from schooling to allow time for self-discovery and growth.

By spending a gap year traveling or even volunteering in foreign countries, it will open students' eyes to real life situations and problems facing other societies every day. Traveling to a foreign country will allow students to completely immerse themselves in a new culture and language. By doing this, students may find that a problem in America is not as prevalent in a different country because of their different way of living. While in a new country, students are able to learn about the diversity in the world and see how different some people's lives are, all while finding out about themselves.

Students gain a better understanding of who they are once they realize that even though they may be an American born citizen, that doesn't mean they have to act American. By accepting this fact, students may become more accepting of others because they begin to see events and problems from a different perspective. By beginning to see the differences in societies, students may want to make a difference by volunteering.

Students may decide to volunteer their time to build churches, build schools, teach children, or even plant gardens. During their new volunteering adventure, gap year students may find something they are really passionate about and discover what their true calling is in life. A study by Karl Haigler and Rae Nelson, authors of the Gap Year Advantage, found that 60 percent of gap year participants said the volunteering experience influenced or confirmed their choice of major. By having a clearer vision for a college major, students will save money by being able to solely focus on classes relevant to their major.

Gap years are beneficial because they alleviate the constant pressure for students to compete with their peers and do the best that they can do. From a very young age, teachers and parents constantly push children to get good grades because their entire future is riding on how well they do academically. This, along with the added stress of sports and extracurricular activities, is what commonly causes students to lose interest in school and come down with a case of "senioritis". A study by the American Gap Association found that 90% of students who take a gap year return to college within one year. After taking a gap year, students have a renewed desire for education and have a better understanding of their goals for college and beyond.

Colleges and employers are more often than not more impressed by students who have taken a gap year because it means they have gone above and beyond the social "norm.” Colleges are impressed by gap years because this time period shows students' dedication and hard work with whatever they have decided to pursue. Because students have gained so much irreplaceable knowledge and experience, they can connect to colleges better and have been known to get accepted into college easier.

College students from Middleburry College in Vermont and the University of South Carolina who had previously taken a gap year were found to have GPAs of .1 to .4 higher than predicted according to school academic credentials. Once accepted at a college, many admission counselors will grant a student's wish to defer their admission for up to one year so they can take a gap year. Along with colleges deferring a student's admission, many scholarships are renewable or can be placed on hold as well.

At Harvard, William Fitzsimmons, the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, stated, "Normally a total of about fifty to seventy students defer (Harvard) college until the next year. The results have been uniformly positive. Harvard's overall graduation rate of 98% is among the highest in the nation, perhaps in part because so many students take time off."

Often times, gap years increase students' chances of doing well in college and being successful after. After students participated in a gap year program sponsored by Thinking Beyond Borders, a parent offered this testimony: "After Thinking Beyond Borders (TBB), Lucy went on to her freshman year of college and took classes that were meaningful to her, not just classes that filled a requirement. She finished the year with all A's and more importantly, she was more engaged with her college classroom experience because of the time spent traveling with TBB. Ultimately, her college experience is more valuable as a result of the gap year with TBB." Lucy is just one of many students who has greatly benefited from taking a gap year before college.

In conclusion, many students still don't feel like they're quite ready for college and that is acceptable temporarily. However, for the undecided students, please consider taking a gap year. Gap years are proven to be highly beneficial because they allow students to become self sufficient, renew their passion for learning, and even increase their chances of being accepted and doing well in college. A quote that sticks with me and ultimately helps solidify my decision to take a gap year is from an MIT admissions counselor. An MIT admissions counselor once said, "From my years in admissions, the overwhelming sentiment from students who have taken a gap year has been: No one ever regrets having taken a gap year, but plenty of people regret not having taken one."

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