My oldest son is currently in the middle of his gap year. He finished his high school work in May, spent the summer and fall working at a variety of jobs to save up money for his trip, and left in mid-January.
Over the course of seven months, he’s working with three different volunteer organizations (a wildlife rescue program in South Africa, a poverty relief organization working with Indian families in the Rajasthan Desert, and a rainforest conservation project in Australia) as well as spending some time at a martial arts academy in China. He’ll be back in mid-August to get ready for his freshman year of college.
I didn’t encourage him to take the gap year because he was was unmotivated or immature. In fact, he’s an over-achieving oldest child: responsible, conscientious, a reader and a thinker. He was academically capable of going straight into college. But there were several other considerations.
First: he didn’t feel passionately about a field of study. He’s not directionless–he wants to write, and he’s talented–but what to major in? He’s sat in on my college classes, which was enough to convince him that being an English major was not the best choice for a would-be writer. (I couldn’t agree more–material for another post.) He’s taken a couple of journalism courses, but that didn’t really thrill him. History, maybe? Psychology? Theatre? Arguments to be made for all of them, and ultimately he’s going to have to enroll in survey courses to feel his way towards a major, but a year of simply writing first will go a long ways towards helping him get some perspective on this.
Second: it was time for him to have an adventure. On his own. He’s eighteen and he’s been home educated on a farm in Virginia. Time for him to figure out how to get un-stranded in an international airport; how to decide out whether or not he’s getting cheated by a street vendor; time for him to miss his siblings; time to make decisions about where to spend money when it’s running short. (OK, he has my credit card for emergencies, but “on his own” doesn’t mean “without emergency money.”)
Third, he didn’t feel strongly about any particular college. He’d done a bunch of investigating, but nothing really struck him. Well…I’m not going to start paying tuition if he’s not thrilled to be there.
For this reason, we ended up waiting a year to apply. Many admissions counselors will tell you to go ahead and apply during the senior year, and then ask for admission to be deferred after you get in. That was my original plan. But he was still hemming and hawing in December of his senior year.
Looking back, I think he felt insecure about the appearance of his high school transcript; he felt like there wasn’t quite enough on there, and that it would be stronger if he actually finished out the spring. Now that we’ve done the transcript and the applications, I actually agree. It looked much stronger in December 2009 than in December 2008.
(Side note: I’ll post more on the college applications process later in the spring–I’ve had to be much more careful about my kids’ privacy as they’ve gotten older, and I don’t want to share information until he’s settled on a school and told me how much he wants me to broadcast about his application itself. I will say that he’s been admitted to two schools with scholarships and hasn’t gotten any turn-downs yet–we’re still waiting on the rest. But obviously delaying the year to apply didn’t torpedo his chances.)
Anyway: once we’d decided to wait on his college applications, his gap year itinerary evolved over five or six months of planning. At first, he just wanted to go work in Australia. I told him he couldn’t simply go rent an apartment in Sydney and start looking for jobs–not unless he took his mother, who would be guaranteeing the rent, along with him to apartment-hunt. That didn’t seem attractive to him, for some reason.
So he started searching around for international trips that would give him a little more structure. (My advice to him: Look for opportunities that provide room and board–that way, even if you run out of spending money, you won’t end up on a gutter without any food.)
In the end, he decided to book his volunteer trips through RealGap, a U.K.-based company that specializes in planning gap and post-graduation years for students. RealGap wasn’t the cheapest way to go, but it guaranteed him transportation to and from airports, help with visas, a local contact in each city where he’d be, emergency assistance, and other support. He had several good job opportunities over the summer and fall, so he was fairly sure he could pay for the entire trip. (In the end, I had to loan him some of the airfare; obviously our plans would have been different if I hadn’t been able to do that.)
We’re obviously still near the beginning of the experience, but his emails and phone calls have been ecstatic. By the time he gets back, a freshman dorm is going to be entirely unchallenging for him. I don’t know whether he’ll have come any closer to deciding on a field of study (stay tuned), but certainly he’ll be a more experienced writer–which means he’ll have a better idea of what he still needs to learn.
Later this week, my last post in this series: other resources for gap-year trips that we discovered during our research.
Thanks, Susan. Good stuff. My oldest son is still 10. I feel intuitively that the gap year will be what we need, and then I panic immediately at the thought of sending him. I remind myself that it won’t happen tomorrow.
Reading with interest!
Ginger
It’s nice to hear that there are companies/organizations that specialize in organizing gap years experiences. My oldest is 6, so it’ll be a while before she takes off. The thing is, it sounds so good, ~I~ want to go! :-D
This is enormously helpful. Thank you for sharing the experience with us.
I’m wondering if you would write sometime about the decision on whether or not to even go to college/university. Whenever I read about gap years, there always seems to be an expectation that college *will* come after that gap, but I always wonder if it’s the expectation of the parent or student or both. Does anyone plan gap years for their kids, only to find that the kid doesn’t want to go to college after all after that year? How does that go over? Or is it that homeschooled high schoolers tend to have a bit more guidance for their after-high school years, and thus they and their parents have a better idea of what the child might want to do after that gap year?
I’m just asking because I was a senior who had no clue what she wanted to do after graduation – I was on the college prep track all through high school, but when push came to shove, I lost interest, and I didn’t have much guidance. The thing I ended up doing was going on a 2 month mission trip to Mexico, the week after graduation – it sparked an interest in me and gave me work/saving goals after that trip, to sign up for training and full time volunteer work 1.5 years later. I ended up doing that for over 6 years before I got married and started a family.
So, do parents know a little more about their teens’ leanings (college, no college, work, technical training, etc.) in high school, so that they can say they are having a “gap year before college?” Or do people ever plan gap years, without having the college expectation for afterwards?
This is a fabulous series. Thank you.
Colleen–
I do think homeschooling parents absolutely know their teens leanings and can guide them effectively in their post-secondary school trajectory. A “gap year” is just a gap between two things, not necessarily high school and college. I think the kid needs to know though. that the gap year must be followed up by whatever you expect or desire for them, if you are paying for it.
Coaching one into college and another toward it right now, I have seen that parental confidence and pride in the young person is one of the most potent forces in making a transition into the post-high-school stage, no matter what that is. There will be adjustments to the “program”, or their plans, but if we look on them as fine tuning the plan instead of failing, kids feel freer to try. Give them freedom to grow up a bit, at least in that first year after high school. The gap year seems to do that – freedom but with structure and an eye toward progress. I think without a plan of some kind, young people feel aimless, and they don’t like that feeling.
We plan to facilitate travel for our daughter upon completion of an AA in Liberal Arts and Culture. She can explore and determine her next steps at that time. She will be 22 years old and more ready for that adventure than she was at 18. Her studies at New Saint Andrews College are rigorous and stretch her tremendously. In essence they have served as a gap, in that they are not “career specific” but broadly classical. Latin, Music, Rhetoric and Lordship (great books, theology and history combined) for two years.
Having a chance to travel at the end of next year is a great motivator for her to press on. If she doesn’t continue in college after that, it will be a gap between college and whatever comes next. In her case it will be something in the following: art or music school, starting a private piano studio, becoming a certified tour guide to France….these things are passions that she has demonstrated most of her life and which have been confirmed in her through her studies at NSA.
There are times when she asks me to tell her “tell me why I’m here”. Many times. And we just confidently assert it is a great program and she can do it, and that makes it ever so much better, for the time being. I think parental involvement (we are still researching for her next steps with her) and confidence in the young person is a potent antidote to their feelings of insecurity and uncertainty. On a day to day basis, she’s “on her own” on campus. but in the broader, life-direction sense, she’s still very much supported and guided. A good combination effort for the 18-20 year old stage.
Susan, Thank you so much for this series of posts. You continue to be such a resource for us. I can’t wait till gap year.
I took my gap year after my Junior year of college. My mom was hysterical. She was certain that I would drop out of college and never finish. I was just tired of school. I had gone straight through since Kindergarten and I just wanted a break. I took off that year and just worked, went back and graduated with a double major and went on to graduate school. I think you and your son are very wise to acknowledge the need for a time to decide.
I did a gap year and almost ten years later I still remember it as one of the best years of my life. I hate when people refer to it as a “year off.” I worked as hard that year as I did during high school. I wasn’t veering from the college track in any way. I was receiving some of the best training for college I ever received. I don’t think there’s anyone out there who couldn’t benefit from a gap year.
Best of luck to your son.
Leah
Thanks for these posts, I’ve found them very informative. I’d always been opposed to a gap year, but now I think I’ll encourage it when my son gets to that age. (He’s only 6 now, but it’s good to be informed!) I do hope you write a post on the reasons not to major in English if one wants to be a writer. What should a student major in if he wants to be a writer?
-Michelle (from Ohio, living in the UK)
My oldest turns 17 this month. I can use all of the information about gap years and college that you have time to type! Break it all down like you do in all of your books, for those of us who feel completely overwhelmed and feel like our craniums are being squished. : )
Angie
I just discovered your site and was surprised by the “gap” information and comments. As a teacher I often recommend to parents and students the idea of taking a year off between high school and college, and more often than not get resistence from the parents. I have often believed that we put our children to work at 6 or younger for the next 12 years–most need a break of some sort. My own experience, while not typical, is the reason I urge students to take a year. I was near the top of my high school class and was supposed to go to the university and be a stunning success–I flunked out after two quarters and ended up at a community college. Marriage, a child, a sojourn in Europe, and 11 years later returned to college to finish my BA and MA with a teaching certificate.
While I do not recommend that long of a gap, it did give me a chance to explore what life had to offer. Anyway, I am so glad I have found a person I can tell my parents to read and see the importance of a year of experience before college–it sometimes has more weight coming from a college professor rather than their child’s high school teacher. Thanks.
How neat! We bought The Gap Year Advantage years ago but decided our kids should get straight to college after high school. Our daughter, our first graduate, was not *mature enough* for a gap year abroad, or so we thought. So we shipped her across the country to a Christian college, (she wanted to do it) and she bailed after one semester. She stayed home Spring semester and is now at a smaller liberal arts college in a town 2 hours away. That was her “gap year”. Ugh. Bad plan.
Our son, graduating in June, wants to go on to professional school after college and just wants to get going, though he too, is debating a lot which major, which college, and nothing seems terrifically enticing to him. He is much more mature than our daughter was at his age, and a very intelligent guy. So far he has four college offers, lots of cash awards, and is competing for his second full ride scholarship this weekend in Oregon. He did not win the first one. The competition was very intense!
I begin to feel he is suffering burnout. He seems almost depressed. I think it is all the pressure to get it all figured out. He’s smart, but he’s not thriving in such a rigorous competition mode. Besides all the college admissions stuff (it’s a huge amount of work) he is competing heavily in piano performance this Spring and has done auditions at local colleges, sent CDs to others, filled out endless essays and music school applications. I have said to him that he can skip college if he wants, for now. But he’s holding on. I think he wants so much to be accepted to his “reach schools” that it is making him anxious. They won’t tell us till like April 1.
I can’t wait to start the college admissions discussion. I think college coaching is an important area of service lacking in our homeschool circles at this time. I know homeschoolers are doing great things in college – getting into super schools, getting the cash to go there and mopping up academically. I think we should know more about how this is done. I know for us, financial aid is out of the question. So even our son would be accepted to say, Stanford, unless he gets a music award, we are going to have to come up with 50K/year to send him cause Stanford only gives money to poor smart kids not rich smart kids.
We need a homeschool scholarship fund.
Sandra
If I may, I’d like to add a slightly different perspective here. I am a young homeschool graduate. As with many homeschool graduates, I graduated HS early. That was 4 years ago. At that time, I wanted nothing to do with school. I knew that if I decided to do college in the future I wouldn’t be going the traditional route; I would probably do distance learning somehow. In these past 4 years, my gap years, I suppose, I’ve honed my homemaking skills (to the best I can without a family of my own!), helped families in my church, read widely, and even attempted to start a business (it flopped, but that doesn’t mean I’ll not resurrect it sometime in the future.). Finally, about a year ago, I got bored and restless. That’s when my father suggested we revisit the idea of college for me. After a little bit of research we’ve decided the fastest, cheapest, and most suitable college route for me is through testing out.
***Pardon me a moment while I do a little advertising. Testing out of college has bee WONDERFUL for me! I think it would probably be greatly suited to many homeschool graduates. I’ve taken 5 CLEP tests and have 30 hours of college credit. I’ve done that in 4 months. A great deal of the thanks goes to InstantCert.com though. Without the wonderful people on there, I don’t know that I would have gotten as far as I have nearly as quick! There are many homeschoolers and homeschool graduates that use IC. Check it out! It’s GREAT, particularly for those of us who didn’t want to go the traditional college route!***
Well, I think I kind of summed up what I am currently doing, as a return student, in my little advertising tangent. Even if I was looking to go to a B&M school, I would try to test out of my core, general education requirements. There is no reason why the first 2 years of college should be spent practically reviewing everything you learned in HS! (At least, that’s what I hear they do from my friends in B&M schools.)
My gap years, I guess that’s what they were… kind of, were wonderful for me, but I wish I’d understood CLEPs soon enough to start them in HS. It seems to me that CLEPs and gap year(s) coincide almost perfectly. That way you’re not totally losing the on-the-books mindset, AND you’re gaining college credit AT YOUR OWN PACE! If studying for one test is interfering with your volunteer work/missions trip/life/whatever, put it off!
In case you haven’t noticed, the 4 months I’ve been doing CLEPs have totally the idea to me; I LOVE them!!! :)