Planning for, taking, and unpacking lessons from a gap year can impact a young person’s journey for the better. Students learn planning skill and languages, engage with global and domestic communities within and outside their cohorts, and build resilience as they navigate uncertainty.
Andrew, a 2017 gap year alum, landed a full-time position after completing a gap year and his undergraduate education. While a linear path isn’t the only indicator of success, it is one indicator of success and we love to see students reach back out to tell us about how they’ve benefited from their gap year experiences. Below, Holly Bull shares about her gap year alum from 2017, Andrew’s gap year win.
Originally published on the Center for Interim Programs website.
Before Andrew graduated from his public high school in New Jersey in 2017, a friend heard Interim’s president, Holly Bull, present at a gap year fair and alerted Andrew to our gap year counseling service. We connected with Andrew and his mother in the fall of his senior year and mapped out a possible plan for after he graduated. He deferred Lynn University and headed off in the fall on a group program in Latin America which involved Spanish immersion through local home stays, cultural study, service projects, travel, and how to deal with a small group of peers for three months. After a winter holiday break at home, he stepped into a more independent internship program with fellow interns in New Zealand and Australia through the winter and spring. His internships involved assisting at a garden center in Auckland and at a virtual reality store in Sydney.
Andrew reached out to us this week saying the following:
“I graduate from Lynn in 4 weeks and just got offered a position to work for the Marriott Voyage Program. I am moving to Houston, Texas in July to work at the Marriott Marquis for 10-12 months. I’m getting paid a huge salary and will be a supervisor for the Food and Beverage Department. The gap year definitely paid off!”
The independent living skills accrued during Andrew’s gap year, especially from his internship experiences, gave him an incredibly useful trial run into the working world. This is one of the great benefits of gap time because it not only prepares students for a more productive college experience, but also for the sometimes daunting transition from college into finding and taking on a job. For Andrew, it will be far easier since he already knows what it’s like to live independently in an apartment, cook for himself, work everyday, and navigate unfamiliar cities. Houston will likely not faze him in the least!
About the Author
Holly Bull is President of the Center for Interim Programs. She’s a Gap Year Association (GYA) Accredited Gap Year Consultant and former member of the GYA Board of Directors. Holly has presented at NACAC, NJACAC, TACAC, HECA, IECA, and NAFSA, and has been an annual keynote speaker since the nationwide USA Gap Year Fairs began in 2007. While getting her Masters in Education at Harvard in 1994, Holly and fellow students formed a campus group called SEEC (Service-learning and Experiential Education Collaborative) which organized the first ever gap year fair in the US with over a dozen local programs drawn from Interim’s database. Since 1980, she and fellow counselors have been interviewed for over 70 gap year articles and 15 TV and radio shows. Interim is also referenced in most books on the gap year.
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