The Benefits Of A Gap Year Experience
I’ve been asked if there are real benefits to completing a gap year experience and while I can talk about the changes a student may undergo, I decided to ask someone who had done a gap year about what it had done for them. My wife’s sister, Audra, is a recent television-radio-film grad from the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and her life is such a constant adventure that we often joke about where her next postcard will come from. She has spent a gap year in Australia, studied abroad for a semester in Italy and also spent two months in India working in Bollywood right after graduation. She is currently living in Brooklyn pursuing a career in television but I know her next adventure is lurking right around the corner. She is, without a doubt, one of the most interesting people I know.
Over the holidays, we had some time to catch up and I asked her about what she learned from her gap year experience that changed her as a student and a person. I loved her response so much I wanted to share it here:
I’ve learned that the best experiences have always been the ones that have initially scared me. I take more risks now because going away for a year and succeeding has made me feel like I can do anything. Therefore, taking a semester abroad in Italy felt like no big deal. Spending two months in India working in Bollywood felt like a mini-vacation. Moving to New York City to pursue a career in television right after felt like just the next step. Yes, these subsequent endeavors frightened me a little, but mostly they felt like adventures. You start saying to yourself, “If I can spend a year in Australia, I can definitely do…” If an experience scares me because it’s new, different, or far from home, I know that it will push my limits and make me a stronger and more interesting person overall.
Because of my Gap Year, I started college knowing that the world was so much bigger than Syracuse University. For four years I never let college become the only world I knew, or what some people called a “bubble.” I took more risks. I took classes that people questioned me for. I was a TV, Radio, Film student taking two languages because I wanted to travel more. I became interested in geography because it had a global skew. I took environmental classes, graphic design classes, and learned SCUBA diving, all because I knew that an array of knowledge and skills would make me more well-rounded going into a television-related career. Sometimes college students pigeonhole themselves into the requirements of one major. They don’t think about the possibilities that exist beyond college until it’s too late, and instead they go to class because they have to and they party because they think that’s what it’s all about.
Having a gap year behind me made me a more curious and risk-taking student right from the beginning. I went into college having seen how enormous the world is and how many opportunities there are. College became not something I had to do, but a collection of experiences that would make me a smarter, more versatile, and more capable person. In other words, I made myself into a person that someone would want to hire, and most importantly, I became a person that I was proud of.
We’re very proud of her too.
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