I’m a fan of the gap year from personal experience.
First: my own experience as a college freshman. I was educated at home, and by the time I’d gotten to be fifteen or sixteen I’d finished most of my high school work and had taken college courses for credit. There didn’t seem to be much point in delaying, so the year I turned sixteen, I went to college. I graduated college at nineteen and had a master’s degree at twenty-one.
Looking back, I don’t see this as a raging success. I was perfectly capable of doing the college work, but I was emotionally immature. (Hey, everyone’s emotionally immature at sixteen.) University is more than a process of mastering material. It’s an introduction to a community of learning. Fitting into a community takes time, and it takes emotional maturity. And it doesn’t matter how hard you study, or how gifted you are–emotional maturity only arrives after the earth has gone around the sun a certain number of times.
Emotional immaturity can take two forms–lack of purpose, or over-focus on a narrow goal. I went through school too fast, too focused, unwilling to slow down and explore the experience. I regret that. I wish I could do it again.
This isn’t so much an argument for a gap year as it is an argument against going to school early. But watching my college freshmen has convinced me that, for many students, seventeen or eighteen is too early.
Excuse me for a moment while I digress. Sending your kid to college early has become, in too many home school circles, a sort of proof of achievement. “My fifteen-year-old just didn’t have anything left to do!” Now that I’m forty-one, when I hear that, I want to say, “Really? Anything? She’s read all the Great Books, learned a foreign language, travelled, worked a job, volunteered? Amazing!” You have to have a certain amount of courage to say, “We’ve decided to wait for an additional year.” Someone’s bound to raise an eyebrow: What? Not ready yet?
Fifteen-year-olds are not ready for college. Many seventeen-year-olds are not ready for college. Quite a few eighteen-year-olds are not ready for college.
Which leads me to the second kind of experience: fifteen years of teaching college classes.
Most of our classes at William & Mary are small; thirty to thirty-five students. Out of an average freshman literature class, five or six are ready to be in college. The others aren’t. They don’t know why they’re there (except that everyone else was going, so they did do). They don’t know why it’s important to learn what I’m teaching them. They don’t know what they want to study, and they’re simultaneously exasperated by the university requirement to take a wide variety of classes (that’s supposed to help them identify what they want to study; it doesn’t work all that well).
Students who’ve taken a gap year are, hands down, easier to teach. They’ve made a decision to go to college after doing something else–which means that they’ve also thought about why they’re in the classroom. They’ve had a year away from formal learning; they missed it. And that extra year gives a maturity in responding to authority that just can’t be matched. I can usually tell you without looking at my class records which students are nineteen or older. They sit up, waiting to hear what you have to say, and ready to take advantage of it.
The seventeen-year-olds slouch.
I talk to a lot of college juniors who still haven’t figured out what they want to study. They’re directionless and planless. They’re going through the motions, waiting for enlightenment to strike them. But enlightenment’s more likely to strike, in my opinion, when you’re doing something meaningful–whether that’s travel, or volunteerism, or working to save money.
It’s also way cheaper to wait for enlightenment while not shelling out thirty thousand a year in tuition and fees.
Stay tuned for Part III of this series: our own experience (so far) with the gap year.
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Agreed! Though in my own teaching experience, some students need a gap decade to be mature enough for college courses. I never worry about the “older” students because whatever they lack in atrophied academic skills is overcome by maturity, responsibility and motivation.
I was struck by the idea that a freshman who had a gap year or two is about the same age as one of the standard college juniors. If you see a lot of juniors who still don’t know what they want to do, it does raise a red flag or two about the value of college. Or at least make me question if it is the panacea that many proponents would suggest.
I can only say that I was a far better student the older I got. Not just because I was older and more experienced. Also because I didn’t treat school as a game when I got older. As an undergrad, I might try to talk my way out of class early or leave if the instructor was 10 minutes late. As a grad student, I knew that I had paid for that class and by golly, I wanted to get something for my money. As a grad student I was annoyed by classes that were fluff, returning little for my tuition and time. As an undergrad I was annoyed by classes where I had to work hard.
I hope there will be a part to this series where you talk about how your son found what he is doing for his gap year. I do think it would be very easy to spend that year in frivolity and not really gain through the experience.
I didn’t take a gap year, but I had a traineeship which meant I went to uni part time and worked in the industry the rest of the time. So, after the first year, I was always older than the majority of the class. I completely agree – we were so much more interested in what was going on, we could see the point of it, we listened and paid attention. The fact that we could lose our job if we failed was also a good incentive
This is a great series.
I wholeheartedly agree. I also graduated from highschool early. I graduated law school at 23.
So, what? I was so emotionally immature when I started college. I share Susan’s sentiments.
My son at 15 has a better education than I do. I went to public high school. In college, I majored in Accounting found it boring and ended up in law school. I didn’t read the great books. I am enjoying his education. I feel like now is when I am getting an education.
To quote Sebastian ( a lady), “I hope there will be a part to this series where you talk about how your son found what he is doing for his gap year.”
Again, thanks for the series.
I do agree that homeschoolers should not send their kids to college early. There is so much to learn; you can’t ‘run out.’ And college is at least as much an emotional and social experience as an intellectual one. So I have always been in favor of staying home until around 18.
My own experience at college was the opposite of yours; at 18 I was mature enough to leave home and go to college–well, except that I couldn’t cook. I spent my junior year of HS as an exchange student and had already learned a lot about managing on my own and applying myself. (I learned how to live in a different culture and became fluent, but the schoolwork was either far too easy or incomprehensible, so I didn’t do much academically. The math was basic algebra, but the word problems killed me because of the technical language. If you need to know how to say “maternity leave” or “mortgage” in Danish, though, I’m your woman.)
What I wasn’t prepared for in college was the academic work. I went to a fairly rotten high school and then got into Berkeley on the strength of the exchange trip. I had not been taught to work at anywhere near the level I was capable of, and I had no idea how ignorant I was. So I struggled quite a bit and did not get as much out of college as I should have.
Anyway, I too want to know how to find things to do for a gap year!
I can’t agree with you more.
I know that I was not ready for college when I graduated high school at 17. I didn’t know that then, but I do now. But the common refrain then was, “If you don’t go now, you’ll get distracted by working and never go.” As if learning isn’t work, or that, if I got THAT distracted, maybe I didn’t belong in college, anyway…but I digress.
I encouraged my kids to take a year off before college. Our first, at 26, is finally attending with a purpose. He didn’t have a traditional gap year, or a conventional life since then (it includes military service in the National Guard) but he’s on his way, now. Our second tried the job/apartment thing, and the college thing, and then joined the Army. He’ll get out this summer, and is returning to college. (The military is more than a gap year, but does shape those “maturing years.”) Our third also opted for the military, also National Guard. His “gap year” was spent in Basic and Advanced Individual training. He started college a week or so ago. Our daughter won’t graduate high school for about three years, depending on her, so she’s a wild card.
But I think our family has shown, at least to themselves, that putting off college a bit doesn’t mean the end of your educational career. I would have preferred that their gap years included some world travel (although the first two did see a bit of southwest Asia!) or public service (wait–they did do that!) OK, I wish their world travel and public service had been a bit less…stressful, but they learned and grew and are much more in tune to their own abilities and gifts, therefore, much more able to make good decisions about their futures. Certainly more than I was!
I would modify your definition of emotional maturity-it’s not even enough that the earth has made enough trips around the sun. The kids has to have had enough chances to fail, to figure things out for him or herself, to actually take responsibility. Many people well into “adulthood” haven’t had this yet. Honestly, I also believe a kid has to feel safe and secure enough to then take those chances and assume those responsibilities. There’s no shortcut.
Susan, what do you think about teens taking a college class for dual credit during their high school years? When they can do that for free it seems like a great deal, and not just financially. But that would definitely put them on the young side–15-17 years old, likely–for taking college classes, even if they’re still living at home.
I was wrong a year ago when I was against my son taking a gap year. He was not young, 19 last August, but he was directionless. College was the next step but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to study. Or what to do with himself. It seemed frivolous to me for us to spend the money so he could hang out another year, admittedly in Israel. But I was wrong.
When he calls us now, he wants to talk about studying neuroscience or green technology. He is anxious to start college next year. This is such a change, and a good one.
It’s sad that even at W&M there are the slouchers and slackers you describe…one would think that spending that much money and getting into such a prestigious school would motivate someone!
I hadn’t thought about the early college thing before, but I do find myself justifying our choice to homeschool to relatives/parents/etc. with anecdotes of families who send their kids to community college at 15 and have them finish an associate’s degree & high school at the same time and enter college as juniors. We’ve talked about the same for our kids if we stick with homeschooling but your point about being emotionally immature is well taken. Probably a bad idea AND if they can’t be a kid when they are a kid, then when can they be a kid?
We are currently doing the high school/college thing with our son who scored high enough on his ACT to be accepted early. I was going to pull him out of the local high school anyway (I had already done that with my son who was a senior) because of some very disappointing things I’d been realizing. My children’s friends are in church, they are very active there – youth, praise band, etc. So for Sam, my 16 yr old, it was an obvious move. It’s been excellent b/c he’s at the community college where he only attends class and then goes to work or comes home. There is not a “campus life” atmosphere so he sees it as the place where he takes his classes not where he socializes or hangs out. HOWEVER, although I think this opportunity is awesome educationally if they can handle it academically (my older son wouldn’t have been as compatible) Sam is very bothered by not knowing what he will do once he is done there. I have been trying to tell him he’s 16 and he shouldn’t know already. But this idea of a Gap year is incredible and has made me so excited because it’s exactly what he needs. I can’t wait to share the idea with him. I’d never heard of it before. Thanks for your blogs on it, they have been fascinating.
Having a 17 yo in our house, it was sure nice to see this!
We homeschool, and he’s taking college classes that do count for college credit. . .but he’s taking them to meet his highschool requirements. He has no plans to attend college next year seeing it as an utter waste of money as he’s yet to decide what to do with his life.
His father is having serious issues with this, and feels that we’ve failed our child as he apparently lacks direction. He “recalls” all of his friends knowing exactly what they wanted to do when they were in high school, and all of them working toward their respective goals.
I had him (my husband) read this, and after he’s had some time to digest it, I look forward to hearing how it struck him.
Christine–[His father is having serious issues with this, and feels that we’ve failed our child as he apparently lacks direction. He “recalls” all of his friends knowing exactly what they wanted to do when they were in high school, and all of them working toward their respective goals.]
I knew what I wanted to do from the time I was in 6th grade and held that view until a year into college. Then I suddenly didn’t know what I wanted to do and wandered aimlessly around for a few years. So, while I know that some people just know what they want and go all the way through college without straying from that path, it’s definitely not true for everyone.
Interesting post. I went to college at 17 and I think I was mature enough. I knew what I wanted to do and was very focused on that goal (going to med school and becoming a physician). However, I also tried to take a lot of classes in literature and art since I knew it was my “last chance”.
That said, one of my biggest regrets is not having had the opportunity to take time off between high school and college or college and med school. Even though I knew what I wanted to do, I think ultimately I would have grown more as a person and learned more if I’d had the chance to pursue some side interests or passions. At the time, I had never heard of anyone taking time off and financially I didn’t really have the options to do things like travel, which I would have loved. Later in med school and residency, I felt like the people who had more non-traditional paths were more well-rounded and more interesting than those of us who had just gone straight through.
That experience has led me to wanting my kids to have the opportunity to do a gap year. Even though they are very young, it’s something my husband and I are already thinking towards. I’m so glad you are sharing your thoughts on this and look forward to reading more.
I’d definitely love a gap year for our kids.
My personal story didn’t have a traditional gap year, but I do feel like I had 3 significant growing periods from which I emerged more mature and motivated for academics (& life!):
1) My first semester undergrad at an Ivy League, there was a strike amongst clerical and technical staff, with the dining hall workers joining in sympathy. We were all thrown into foraging or cooking meals illegally in our dorms. Through the fellowship of upperclassmen, I joined a Bible study and became a committed Christian believer.
2) My junior year, I took a semester abroad when I realized it could be fun and save my parents significantly from the tuition of said Ivy League institution. Besides the above, the time away from the familiar was emotionally challenging and ultimately faith-building.
3) After college, I took some time off to work before applying for graduate school. I still wasn’t absolutely positive about my “chosen” profession, but came to realize ultimately that what one does for a living does not define the whole person. I now happily work part-time, am at home with the kids part-time, and loving the balance.
Susan,
Thank you for this continued thread.
I graduated from a private high school at the tender age of 16.5. I was gungho for college but my parents insisted that I take a year off to mature and gain some experience. It was a wise choice on their part. Though I was very angry with them at that time (and none of our local universities would take me at that age without parental consent), I look back and can see that it was for the best.
During my gap year, I tutored in reading and mathematics at the local elementary school. I also accompanied the school choir and assisted with their Christmas musical and spring concert. I spent three weeks in Jamaica on a teen mission trip, an experience that I will forever cherish. All in all, though that year began with a resentful teen, it ended with a mature one.
As I posted previously, our daughter graduated in May from our homeschool program and is having a “non-traditional” year. She’s loving it and I am so thankful that we chose this option!
My husband’s gap year was actually during high school. Though academically brilliant, he wasn’t working to his potential and really struggling emotionally. He was an extremely shy kid and his father, a former school teacher, decided that what he needed was a year off to gain some self-confidence. They moved to Florida, did not register him for school, worked to remain under the radar of local school authorities. His father took a one year sabbatical from his job in order to spend time with his son. They rebuilt car engines, refurbished vehicles and sold them for profit, traveled, etc. It sure did pay off! My husband returned to school as a confident, focused, young man who then went on to graduate magna cum laude with a triple major. When I met him, he was a college senior and the most mature male in his age range that I had ever met.
Just one suggestion for those looking for gap-year opportunities. Both national and local 4-H programs are looking for teen mentors for younger 4-H students. There is a 4-H teen council that organizes some wonderful travel and volunteer programs for post-high school students. 4-H allows students to remain as regular members through their 19th birthday and then encourages them to continue as adult volunteers. This may be one organization to look into if you aren’t sure what is available to your teen. Additionally, there are a number of college scholarships available to 4-H members and a gap year for volunteer work and travel seems to be common for 4-H high school grads here in rural Michigan.
Keep us posted on your son’s experiences. I think we would all like to hear about his adventures.
Sincerely,
PatH
My son took advantage of homeschooling’s flexibility and took his gap year a few months at a time each spring throughout high school. He spent the time peacewalking, sometimes in other countries. The difference between him and his non-traveling friends is amazing. Doing it this way made high school math and foreign languages harder because those things are better done with no gaps, but it meant that when he finished high school, he went straight to college without a year-long gap in his math, which would have been even worse. Not that we planned it that way GRIN. We didn’t plan any of it. It just happened. Looking back, though, I can see that allowing him to leave for a few months in the middle of every school year was the second best homeschooling decision we made. (The first was to let him spend an afternoon a week helping Grampa.) There were a few other disadvantages to doing the gap year this way. Peacewalking in the spring and community college classes didn’t combine very well. My son had to restrict his walking to after his spring finals, shortening his walks to about a month for the last two years of high school. The first three years, though, he walked for three months each spring. Another disadvantage was that my son had five years of high school on his transcript. We organized the transcript by subject rather than date and explained why in the school profile. Another was that we sent a quite young teenager off overseas by himself instead of waiting until he was 18 or so. This turned out to have some advantages as well as disadvantages – people are more helpful, take better care of, and are more tolerant of a 15 year old than a 19 year old. A 19 year old looks adult and is expected (probably mistakenly) to know what he is doing. We are currently doing the same sort of gapping for our youngest.
-Nan
I was so ready for college at 17… it was awesome to get escape high school. College was a time for me to shine and really enjoy life. I took my gap year before going on to get my masters degree.
Thanks for this series. I have a gifted kid who really wants to go to college early, but I’ve told her to get some more life experiences and enjoy life, and I’ll let her go to college part time when she turns 15. I enjoyed college so much (maybe due in part to my horrible high school experience), that I’d hate for her to be too young to enjoy the college experience. I know she could do the classwork at college… but she is too young now to enjoy the life experience that college is.
I really like the idea of having a broad range of experiences before college. I graduated high-school at almost 19 (I had emigrated and had mismatched school years-hence the older age) then worked in a daycare for part of a year, went to Pakistan for 6 weeks, and then hit university as I turned 20. I chose education and I loved the course work and did okay after the first semester. I learned some things about studying, like it’s a bad idea to procrastinate and try and read/study 5 sociology chapters the night before the mid-term(I got a 3 on a 9point scale):)
My marks went progressively higher throughout my courses as I learned to read, do research, and write papers. I paid for university by myself with a small amount of $$ from my parents. I was living at home and I didn’t have to pay for room and board so long as I was going to school. I got married after 2nd year and we paid/got loans for the rest.
Yes, I was young but we were naive and happily in love so it all worked out. It was a novelty to eat kd, corn and hot dogs and we weren’t accumulating debt except for tuition so it was good:)
My only problem in my university came when I was in my last semester. The last semester was when we did student teaching. I was placed in a high-needs school with a transient population and nothing was like the research or classes said it would be like. There was a disconnect between the two which was hard to bridge. I discovered that I didn’t like doing the work of teaching. I *hate* classroom management. The kids had all sorts of needs which were not academic which I could not address but which impacted what I tried to do. I graduated but found it hard to be excited about teaching. I ended up back at a daycare, recession made it hard to find jobs, and eventually ended up working with children with autism. I loved that job, and it actually had a connection to my education;)
I think that I was better for having a year off. I knew for sure that I didn’t want to work in a daycare for the rest of my life. I needed to get a degree. However, I was still naive in that I thought I knew what teachers did since I had gone to school. My dh and I both found that the university wasn’t really forthcoming about the realities of employment after graduation. My dh had recruiters come and say that mechanical engineers can design cars. That is true and very appealing to a high school student. But, the reality is that about 1% of mec-e’s design cars and a lot of the rest of the work is air-handling systems-not so appealing. I am hoping to get my dd’s to consider the realities of the job they’re aiming to get and not just what recruiters say. What exactly will this degree help you achieve? Do you really know what this profession does? etc.
So, with a gap year I think it’s important for the youth to gain maturity and experience but to also think and possibly shadow a person in areas of interest.
I agree. I begged my parents to let me take time off because I had no idea what to major in. They said “If you don’t go now, you never will” and then spent $60,000 for a private college. I had some good experiences but graduated with a fluffy major that netted me no profit. How I wish I had that money to start a business.
I graduated from high school at 16 and took an unintentional gap year, traveled and went to a trade school far from home. After a year of trade school I was ready to go back to school. I spent the next seven years taking classes in subjects that interested me, but I never graduated even though I had double the number of credits. I didn’t go to school to get a job at the end; I went to school to fill in the gaps in my education, the gaps from finishing high school at 16.
The gap year, especially with college acceptance out of the way, does make a difference. I look at my slouching 17 year-old son an know that this boy would not last more than a week in a classroom even at the community college level. A gap year for this boy could possibly mean the difference between success and failure academically.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting this series! It is exactly what I needed to read right now. My husband and I enjoyed reading Part I and II and we eagerly await the rest of the series.
Thanks for the link to the 10 Things to Do In Your Gap Year article as well. It has given us much food for thought for our 14 and 16 year old boys.
Very appreciative of your thoughts,
Barb and Dave
Wonderful!! Thank you for this series on the gap year. Our plan is for our children to travel and do volunteer work the year after graduating, and then go on to college. I want them to go in fully appreciating what they have, and some life experience behind them. My gap was 15 yrs…I am just now going to college, and can say without doubt that NOW I am ready. Any earlier it would have been a waste of time and money…before children because I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my adult life, and after because I had very few brain cells left.
Now that they are older I am able to take the time and focus that my degree takes, and I know what I want to do with my life…and last but not least I am able to fully appreciate the process of education..the frustration, elation and pushing through things that I have no interest in but serve to fulfill the greater purpose.
Thank you a million times over for this series! My daughter graduated (from homeschooling) in 2008 and took a gap year much to the horror and distress of family and friends. She didn’t know what she wanted and was not interested in going to college at the time. She is now 19 1/2 and truly enjoying taking her classes at the local jr. college. She needed the time to mature and know what she truly wanted to do with her life, not just academically. She was able to go to Washington DC, spend some time with family, and confirm that she wanted to study American History. She has your book of Ancient history, my little ones use SOW, and I am awaiting the arrival of The Well Educated Mind, so that I can begin my own “real” education! Needless to say, you are a wonderful blessing in our homeschooling lives and hope you visit CA really soon!
I struggled with learning disabilities, all through school. I went to one of the top five public high schools in the USA and has no confidence in my self or my education . I was working full time trying to put myself through community college and support myself. I was not a happy girl. when I was twentyone I dropped outof school worked at saving my money for a three month solo trip to South Africa and Zimbabwe. It was the best thing I could of done. I came back with so much confidence I could finally concquer college.
I am also wondering what you think about the “Early College” programs where high school students earn college credit and graduate with an associates degree? I see your point about emotional maturity but was wondering if getting to tackle more substantial material earlier might help a kid choose a life’s work. I certainly enjoyed my college time, worked, studied abroad, took classes in lots of different areas, but never really found that focus – I believed what my college told me about “liberal arts majors are able to do anything!” but never figured out what that “anything” was!
I loved your imagined response to the “My fifteen-year-old just didn’t have anything left to do!” I’m 41 myself, and there are plenty of things to do, read, explore, discover. But with two elementary-aged children I homeschool, my opportunities are, at this moment, straitened. Maybe I’ll take a gap year when I’m fifty!
“My fifteen-year-old just didn’t have anything left to do!” Now that I’m forty-one, when I hear that, I want to say, “Really? Anything? She’s read all the Great Books, learned a foreign language, travelled, worked a job, volunteered? Amazing!”
You use this statement rather sarcastically, but this is exactly the situation I’m in and not for the first time. Without going into personal details, what else is there to do? We live in a rural area. My kids can run the farm, speak languages, travel regularly, work and volunteer. At 17 they still run through their passions and need some inspiration to continue. Where do we get that without using the University system?