Voices Project: Maddy B: On the Growth During a Gap Year

Maddy Bazil Gap Year Overview

Highschool: Walter Johnson HS, Bethesda MD

University: University of St. Andrews 2018

August-October: Córdoba, Argentina – Volunteered with Projects Abroad Human Rights office

October-December: Worked in retail at home in Washington DC

January-March: Travelled around Israel and surrounding places (10 day Birthright trip, then independently backpacked around Tel Aviv, Haifa, the Galilee (3 weeks spent WWOOFing on a goat farm), Negev Desert (hiked in the desert and travelled to Jordan), West Bank

March-April: Studied French at L’Institut de Touraine in Tours, France

May: Inter-railed around Europe with 2 friends for 14 days

What do You Wish You Knew Going In?

Even the best-laid plans can go awry sometimes, and it’s not a cause for panic – usually this leads you to something more interesting and memorable instead.

Do You Regret Taking a Gap Year?

No – I would’ve regretted not taking one.

Why Did You Take a Gap Year?

I was burnt out after working hard academically for years at a high school where it felt like everyone was competing on the same prescribed track to ‘success’. I’ve always loved to travel and I wanted to see the world, work hard at things I couldn’t learn from behind a textbook, learn more about myself outside of an academic context, and recharge my passion for learning before going on to university.

Memorable Moment

My time in the Middle East was entirely my own – no program, no school, no supervision and therefore no safety net – and I was more alone for much of it than I had ever been. It was exhilarating, but it was also terrifying. I had always dreamt of visiting Petra, Jordan, ever since I first watched the Indiana Jones films as a little kid and so I decided that this was the time to make that happen. With nobody to go with, I bought myself a ticket for a long-distance bus from Haifa down to Eilat, spending hours watching the landscape turn to desert through the window. In Eilat I hopped on a random tour from my hostel that would inexpensively take a bunch of us over the border to Jordan and north to Wadi Musa, where Petra is.

My tour group mainly consisted of families who all split off once we arrived in the valley, so I set out alone to spend the day exploring the ruins by myself. Walking through the labyrinthine alleyways between pink rock walls, stepping aside for passing camels, couldn’t prepare me for the sight of the famous Treasury facade emerging from the cliff as I rounded a corner.

It was overwhelming to see this immense, stunning wonder of the world in real life up close after dreaming about it for the better part of my life. I stood immobile for probably 10 or 15 minutes, crying behind my sunglasses, just staring up at the Treasury. All of the planning that had gone into the year and all of the things that had deviated from plan, all of the long bus rides and days spent in solitude and self-reflection – all of that suddenly was worth it to stand at the foot of the Treasury and think to myself, ‘Holy sh*t, I wanted to come here and I made it happen.’

How Has Your Gap Year Impacted You?

I definitely went into my first year of university feeling much more sure of myself and my personality and my needs and wants than I would have if I hadn’t taken a year out. I felt like I was a more fully-formed individual with some lived experience (plus some good stories), and I was engaged with academia in a way I wouldn’t have been otherwise.

This made the transition much easier in some ways (I didn’t struggle with living on my own away from home), but also challenging in others (I had a bit of a holier-than-thou complex being a year older and ‘wiser’ than many of my peers; I had to relearn how to settle down in one place and put down permanent roots without feeling claustrophobic).

That being said, being at university in the UK means that a lot of my friends and peers also took gap years as it’s much more common across the pond to do so than it is here, and so it’s been interesting to hear what other people did during theirs and what they got out of it, and it also means that I’m not a year older than absolutely everybody which is nice.

Something that a lot of people would ask me during the gap year was “Don’t you think it’ll be impossible to want to return to school after this?” or “I could never have taken a gap year – I would’ve just never gone back to college afterward” and in retrospect I can see where people were coming from with comments like those, and the transition to school was hard at times – but in the big picture I truly did feel rejuvenated and more independent and ready to tackle university after taking the gap year, and in fact the things I did and places I went during the year continue to this day to impact my academic interests and pursuits.