Taking time out: for some students, gap years can be a meaningful bridge between high school and the rest of their lives

Career World, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Charles Piddock

Swoosh! Another stolen ball, another basket for the other team. Things are getting out of hand, so the coach immediately calls a time-out so the team can regroup, focus, and execute the game plan.

In sports, time-outs are often the key to victory, and they can work the same way in life. If you feel your game plan for life after high school is not clear, or if you really don't know what you want to study in college, then calling a time-out may work for you.

The idea of a "gap year"--a time-out of 12 months after high school graduation--has long been popular in Great Britain and is catching on fast in the United States. Last year, almost 10 percent of U.S. high school grads took a gap-year time-out.

Don't get the wrong idea. Taking a gap year does not mean living as a couch potato for 12 months or partying for weeks on end. It's something entirely different.

"For a student to stay home and veg out on the couch watching TV is a bad plan," says psychologist and educational consultant Carol Maxym, coauthor of Teens in Turmoil: A Path to Change for Parents, Adolescents, and Their Families. Maxym says students should choose to do something "gutsy" during their year, something that stretches the boundaries of their experience.

Career World talked to Holly Bull, who runs the Center for Interim Programs, headquartered in Princeton, N.J., and Cambridge, Mass. Since 1980, Interim Programs has found gap-year projects for more than 3,500 people and has a database of more than 4,000 options worldwide.

The typical students who come to Interim Programs, said Bull, are "kids who want to go out and explore, who don't want to be munched up by the system, who don't want to march in lockstep into college when they really aren't sure what they want to do."

After a year off doing something completely different, said Bull, "the students often come back eager to go to college, more mature, more secure, and more motivated. As one girl told me, 'I feel like I'm making my career choice myself, not being pushed into it.'"

Career World talked to three students about their recent gap-year experiences.

IAN HOCK, 20, New York City: "I went to a private high school in New York," said Hock. "Everyone was ferociously competitive and worked really hard. I just wanted some time to chill out, and summer was not long enough.

"I heard about kids who had taken a gap year, but I thought they were slacker kids and they were hurting their career," said Hock. After asking friends and teachers about gap years, he changed his opinion and told his parents he wanted some time off. His parents supported his plan. He went to the Center for Interim Programs and told the counselors there that he was interested in doing something outdoors. Soon the New York City kid found himself working at Mission Wolf, a wolf sanctuary located in the remote mountains of Colorado.

"We took care of wounded wolves, rescued young wolves from people who illegally owned them as pets, and helped protect them in large, fenced-in areas. The hardest part was cutting up the carcasses of dead livestock brought in by ranchers to feed the wolves."

Hock went home after three months in Colorado and, in February--the dead of winter--flew to Fairbanks, Alaska, to work at a remote kennel for sled dogs--another match found for him by the Center for Interim Programs. "I enjoyed both jobs during my gap year. I felt for the first time I was really on my own, in a working environment, doing something useful. It cleared my mind, and I could focus on what I wanted to do in life."

Hock was scheduled to attend Colorado College in September. He felt that his experience during his gap year made him more mature and better able to pursue his college career.

STEPHANIE YARGER, 18, Dayton, Ohio, "I hated high school," Yarger told Career World. "I needed more of a challenge, and I wanted time off just to breathe. I didn't want to be like some of my classmates who simply were going to college because it was expected of them. They didn't really want to be there."

Yarger found out about gap years through her high school guidance counselor. With her parents' support, she joined a group called Where There Be Dragons that offers several programs of educational travel in Asia. Yarger signed up for a three-month trip through Nepal and Tibet to study art and culture in the Himalayas. "We moved from village to village as travelers, not tourists," said Yarger, "studying the culture and religion."

Because of that experience, Yarger realized that she wanted to study world culture and take up a career that would allow her to travel. "I knew right away that I wouldn't be happy at a desk job," she told Career World. "The gap year really changed my life in a positive direction." Yarger was scheduled to attend Wesleyan University in Connecticut in September.

RICHARD HEROLD, 19, Bernardsville, N.J. When he graduated from high school, Herold wasn't sure what he wanted to do. Because he was interested in many areas--political science, English, film studies--he "decided to take a year off to find out what I really wanted to do."