Every year, more and more students from around the country – and around the globe – embark on a gap year between their senior year of high school and freshman year of college. While high school burnout, the travel bug, and a desire for adventure are the most frequently cited reasons for taking a gap year, the popularity of taking a gap year has peaked in part because of the increasing number of studies proclaiming gap years’ numerous positive effects. According to research by the American Gap Year Association, a nonprofit that accredits Gap Year programs, more than 98% of students feel more developed as a person after a gap year, and 97% feel more mature heading into college. The study also cited the academic and career benefits of gap years, with 73% of students feeling more ready for college and 84% of students touting tangible new career skills. Students, and their parents, are listening: the Associated Press reported that between 30,000 and 40,000 American students take gap years each year.
While gap years have often been dismissed as an option only feasible for the extremely wealthy, many of the gap year students emphasized the affordability of their respective gap years – whether they spent them working abroad or saving up beforehand. Youth hostels, work-abroad programs, and the ever-increasing number of budget airlines – including Iceland Air, WOW Airlines, and Interjet Airlines – lend to a cheaper and more affordable gap year experience.
Each year, the number of Lick-Wilmerding students embarking on gap years fluxuates: in 2017, only three students took gap years, while 14 students took gap years in 2015. Below, four Lick-Wilmerding students who embarked on distinctly different – yet equally rewarding – gap year adventures share their stories, their advice, and their changed mindsets.
Amelia Levin-Sheffield ‘17
Experience: Before starting her fashion design program at New York University in the spring of 2018, Amelia Levin-Sheffield took a gap semester to pursue her affinity for fashion. Describing her initial experience as “very spur of the moment,” she spent the summer after her senior year emailing Hollywood’s top 25 stylists with her qualifications and desire to intern. After receiving three responses, she chose to work as an unpaid intern for Ilaria Urbinati, a stylist who dresses the likes of Shailene Woodley, Margot Robbie, and Ryan Reynolds. Levin-Sheffield booked a flight to Los Angeles, secured an apartment and car through family friends, and started her internship in mid-October. Much of her time was spent dropping off outfits for celebrities – including a quick outing to drop off clothes for Ryan Reynolds in her second week. Her three-month internship allowed her to more deeply understand the world of professional fashion and make key connections within the industry, which will benefit Levin-Sheffield after – and throughout – her college career. She’s now excited to enter college “refreshed and in an optimistic headspace,” and is confident that she’ll thrive in her career’s next steps.
Advice: Levin-Sheffield “highly recommends” a gap year, emphasizing the importance of “finding something you’re passionate about, and doing it.” Yet she also noted that a gap year is not for everyone: “If you feel ready and excited for college,” she noted, “go for it if it feels right.”
Kelby Kramer ‘17
Experience: After four years of Mandarin classes at Lick-Wilmerding, Kelby approached his gap year with the intention to travel, continue his Mandarin education, and explore a culture distinctly different from The Bay Area’s own. He was accepted into the National Security Language Initiative for Youth program, which is run by the United State’s State Department and trains students to fluency in a new language – and is entirely free of charge. Through the program, he is spending the year in Beijing, China, taking Mandarin language classes from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and staying with a host family on weekends. Though he’s only five months into his nine-month program, he has become fluent in Mandarin and is able to communicate with his —- roomate entirely in Mandarin. Kramer touts his increased independence, refined Mandarin skills, and confidence as tangible benefits of his gap year that will serve him well into college and beyond.
Advice: Kramer emphasizes the importance of a “carefully planned out, well-structured” gap year and a supportive network of family and friends, commenting that a gap year is a “challenging experience, but it’s a rewarding one.” He also pointed to gap year’s ideal, pre-college timing – a period of one’s life in which students are “younger and more malleable:” willing to expand their horizons, embrace their newfound freedom freedom, and eager to explore the world.
Jacqueline Blaska ‘15
Experience: For Blaska, her gap year was not much of a choice: she got extremely sick towards the end of her senior year and was forced to take a gap year for health reasons. Nonetheless undeterred by her gap year’s origins, she took full advantage of the year, spending the first third of the year in her grandpa’s apartment in New York City. Working in a coffee shop, she saved up enough money to travel solo throughout Europe during the second portion of the year. On February 1, 2016, she flew to Berlin, Germany and stayed in youth hostels throughout the continent, traveling as far east as Croatia, as far south as Morocco, and as far north as Scotland – and staying nowhere for more than three weeks. She hitchhiked, couchsurfed, and spent an average of $15 a night in youth hostels – even spending two weeks in Wales working on a family’s farm in exchange for room and board through a website called Workaway. Meeting incredible people from across the globe, Blaska regained her sense of independence and possibility post-high school. She praised the experience as “without a doubt the best decision I have ever made in my life,” and ventured on to Yale University “happier and healthier” with a newly empowered sense of “optimism about people and the state of the world.”
Advice: Blaska, like everyone interviewed, thoroughly enjoyed – and highly recommends – her gap year experience. She emphasized that “there is not a single person who wouldn’t get something out of a year off.” Overall, she could not recommend the experience more or have gotten more out of it – and after learning her whole life “how to be a student, this time [she] got to be a human.”
Eva Laxo ‘16
Experience: Eva Laxo ‘16 embarked on her gap year inspired by friend’s stories, a spur-of-the moment sense of adventure, and her feeling of instability regarding “who [she] was and who [she] wanted to be.” After deferring from Boston College in early May, she applied to a number of gap year programs, getting into a program through the company Outward Bound and a separate program through Where There Be Dragons. During the fall semester of her gap year, she flew to Maine for Outward Bound’s program “Maine to the Bahamas,” which began with canoeing, wilderness training, and backpacking in Maine and concluded with marine biology research at a Bahaman science institute. After thoroughly enjoying her fall experience, she began her second semester program: Where There Be Dragon’s Indonesia Semester Program. Alongside a group of students and two mentors, she visited over 15 Indonesian cities and towns, staying in homestays for a total of six weeks throughout the program. Laxo emphasized that she “could not say enough good things” about the Dragons program, enjoying every second – and even becoming proficient in Indonesian! The experience was “endlessly helpful and valuable” for Laxo, who came out of her gap year “more mature, focused, and grounded than [she has] been in [her] entire life.”
Advice: Laxo admits that going into her gap year was “one of the scariest things [she] has ever done.” Watching her friends go off to college was especially difficult, but she emphasized that initial feelings of self-doubt and fear fade – and can now confidently assert that “you will never regret your gap year.”
Ron Oppenheimer ’16
Experience: Ron Oppenheimer is currently in his second year of a Canadian circus program! Having trained at circus schools in the Bay Area, he knew that he did not want to let go of his dream of working in the Circus professionally. He applied both to MIT and to the very competitive École nationale de cirque in Montreal during his senior year. After getting into both programs, Oppenheimer asked MIT for leave to take a gap year. He then flew to Canada, rented a small apartment, and got to work: he has circus classes from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. most days, with topics ranging from juggling to acrobatics, dancing to acting. Outside of class, he’s getting to know the circus industry, meeting a variety of professionals within the field and getting to know the career path. Having thoroughly enjoyed his one-and-a-half years thus far, he can “already imagine [him]self touring the world and working with a professional circus company” – and is thrilled to be continuing on the career path he so loves.
Advice: While Oppenheimer’s gap year was not spontaneous in the least, he emphasized the spontaneity of gap years themselves – asking “why not?,” and arguing that “if you have something you’ve always wanted to do and wanted to try, why not try it now?” Oppenheimer also emphasized the affordability of not only his own gap year but gap years in general, noting that his apartment and circus training in Canada cost less than the sum total cost of a single year of high school extracurriculars. Working over the summer, he’s been able to contribute to tuition – and the Canadian school is far cheaper than any such American counterpart.
Resources for a Gap Year
USA Gap Year Fairs: Each event showcases a multitude of gap year programs, and includes college counselors and gap year experts, USA Gap Year Fairs is a go-to for gap year information. Their upcoming gap year fair will be on March 4 at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay.
Hostelworld: Hostelworld is perhaps the most comprehensive listing of global youth hostels to date. With over 35,000 listed properties in 170 countries, it’s a website most travelers couldn’t live without.
Work Away: Workaway.info is a site for international cultural exchange, in which hosts from around the world post job opportunities for Workawayers. Jobs last anywhere from a few days to a few months, and everywhere in between.
