Voices Project: Jordan Ricker on Gap Year as the First Step

Jordan Ricker grew up in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington DC, and never considered a gap year. College was the expected path and a good state school seemed to be the obvious choice.

It was his grandfather who first opened his eyes to the possibility of going further afield for university, encouraging him to come to California and tour several schools. After his college tour with his grandfather, Jordan began to think a little outside the box and applied to a number of schools, both in different US states and internationally. However, it wasn’t until a friend who was on a program with the organization Global Citizen Year (GCY) called him from Brazil and suggested that he look into taking a gap year that Jordan was even aware that was an option.

Having taken six years of French in school, but still unable to speak it well, Jordan noted that GCY offered programs in French-speaking countries and his interest was piqued. (But his parents were split. His father was wary of him getting off his educational track.) With encouragement from his mother, he applied and was accepted to a Global Citizen Year program in Senegal, in West Africa. While he had also been accepted to Franklin University Switzerland, a small, Swiss/American hybrid university in the Italian-speaking southern part of Switzerland, he decided to defer his freshman year of college and take a gap year first.

While not yet at college, during his eight months in Senegal, Jordan still spent a lot of time studying. His subjects included French, Wolof (the predominant local language), Senegalese history and politics, and, most critically, first-hand cultural immersion through living with a host family in Mboro, a town of about 20,000 people. He worked an apprenticeship as well, teaching computer skills in French and English classes in English at a local vocational school.

While he was there to teach, Jordan believes that his real “job” in Senegal was to learn. The experience of living with a family, going beyond abstract cultural concepts to the nitty-gritty of daily life in a Senegalese family taught him that it’s very different to truly live someone else’s worldview. Among the important lessons he learned was to suspend his own judgement in the moment and to dig deeper to understand why things are done differently in another place. By having the opportunity to experience in-depth immersion with one culture, the way Jordan experienced the world was changed and he developed a cross-cultural communication tool kit that has helped him to transfer those lessons to other people and other places when he encounters them.

After his gap year, Jordan returned to Franklin University Switzerland and majored in History as well as and Communication and Media Studies, and then went on to obtain his Masters in International Management.

Jordan laughed when asked what he had to say to other people considering a gap year, “Well, it’s very cliche, but my gap year has been, hands-down, the most transformative experience of my life. What it did was allow me to take the first step I needed to get out into the world. It gave me the tools to travel and conceptualize the world in an entirely different way than I was previously able to. I’ve worked at a series of internships and jobs in Rwanda, Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa that I never would have been able to do otherwise because Global Citizen Year gave me the necessary confidence and exposure. GCY provided an experience that allowed me to peek behind the curtain of what’s possible. It gave me the mental tools and access to the first step on the ladder that has paved the way for the rest of my life.”
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After nearly six years of living, study, and working abroad, Jordan returned to the US in February 2018 and is currently working on the CBS show Madam Secretary. He has been fortunate enough to travel to over 35 countries and in addition to English, speaks French, Italian, and Wolof. He firmly believes that intercultural exposure is the key to improved global understanding.