5 Steps to Being Prepared for Anything on Your Gap Year by GYA Admin For many people, their gap year is their first solo journey in the world. It’s a good idea to be thinking ahead and and putting some effort into becoming prepared in advance of your gap year. You’ve heard the saying, “Fortune favors the prepared,” this is true, so is my Uncle Dick’s maxim, “The 7 P’s” (Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance). With that in mind, here are five ways that you can be prepared for anything when you travel. Educate Yourself There is no…
Planning
Prompts to Find Your Passions Before your Gap Year by GYA Admin Let me open with a question: What are you passionate about? Don’t rush on to the next sentence to find out what I’m going to say about that. Stop. Think. Give your mind and your heart a few minutes to whisper in the corner about that. What are you passionate about? Our passions are the things that drive us (or should!) They are the things that we are most interested in. The things that we feel most strongly about. The causes that we feel compelled to support. Too…
How to Convince Parents That Taking a Gap Year is a Good Idea by Jennifer Sutherland-Miller Sometimes, it can be hard to convince parents that taking off on a long trip instead of heading straight to college, or a job, is a good idea. Especially if they are not travelers themselves. It can be hard for them to understand why you would want to trade a “sure thing,” like continuing your education or entering the workforce, for an open ended, nebulous, gamble, like traveling. They may worry that your trip is going to make it harder for you to come…
Voices Project Video: Matthew Kenny on the moment he knew he had to go home… and why with Matthew Kenny Often, the lessons in gap year come with going. But, sometimes, the greatest lessons are in coming home. Matthew Kenny took a gap year before he applied to Harvard Graduate School of Education in Human Development. Watch as he talks about the pressing need to go, and to explore, as well as the moment he knew it was time to come home. Watch all the way to the end, because his “why” moment of realization is a breathtaking one. Share…
The Voices Project: Ronen on Challenging Beliefs & Abilities on a Gap Year With Ronen S Ronen’s Gap Year Overview High School: Trinity School, New York City University: University of Chicago 2020 May-August: Worked as busboy at pizza and Greek food restaurant September-December: Did work for room and board in France, Italy, and Germany through Workaway January-February: Worked as delivery boy at same restaurant in New York March-August: Thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, 2189 miles from Georgia to Maine Memorable Moment I’ll never forget the breeze on my face as I biked home from the restaurant every night at 1am. I…
The Voices Project: Nan on Growing Up and Overcoming Hardship on a Gap Year with Nan, gap year alum Nan’s Gap Year Overview High school: Saint Ann’s School, Brooklyn, NY University: Stanford 2020 September-December: Ballymaloe Cookery School 12-week intensive course December-January: Hung out at home January-May: ISA Spring 4 Semester in Spain at the University of Salamanca Memorable Moment Taking a road trip to a food festival in Dingle, Ireland with two of my friends from cooking school. We pulled up to the beach in the dark and slept there in the car, and when we woke up everything was…
Voices Project: Maddy B: On the Growth During a Gap Year with Maddy Bazil 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,…
Why we Discourage Orphanage Volunteering and What to do Instead by GYA Admin Last month World Nomads published an excellent article about orphanage tourism and why it should be avoided. At the GYA we are heavily invested in raising the ethical bar on service learning, across the board for gap year programs and students. That’s one of the primary goals of our accreditation process and one of the reasons that we encourage gap year counselors and students to thoroughly vet the organizations they choose to partner with around the world. Having good intentions is not enough. We are responsible for…
Voices Project: A Gap Year to Focus on Golf by Jordan Fuller The thought of taking a gap year started with an idea I stumbled upon in a book during my studies. I had been reading a great deal on the topic of “redesigning your life” when I found Tim Ferriss, bestselling author of several books including the Four Hour Workweek. In the Four Hour Workweek, Ferriss argues that we spend the best years of our life working ourselves into exhaustion in order to one day retire during the twilight of our lives hoping we’ve saved enough to enjoy the…
GapYearly: Necessity is the Mother of Invention Sasha Landauer and Jiyoung Jeong SASHA:It was noon on a Tuesday in February. I wasn’t in my second hour of an organic chemistry lab. Nor was I napping after a particularly gruesome history midterm. I was whooping while throwing a 100lb tree down a hillside near Mount Everest. To my right was a ten-year-old monk sliding down the mountain on a wooden plank, holding a teapot on his head and an axe in his hand. We were on our way to rebuild Pema Choling Monastery’s Buddha statue, which had been destroyed in the…