Missing the Year is Missing Out: Go for the Gap 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 8760 hours, 525600 minutes, 31536000 seconds: a lot can happen in a year. It is amazing that even though humans only have, on average, about 78 years to live, we still spend the first five years at home as babies, the next thirteen in required schooling, and are then expected to continue with at least two-to-four years of college, which is followed by years of graduate school. A gap year between high school and college has proven to be extremely beneficial to the students that have taken this opportunity and should be completed by more students. By taking a gap year, students are allowed to travel and reach a better understanding of the world around them. In
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The article “Taking a Gap Year: It could be the Best Lesson in the World” describes how research shows that students who take a gap year have a large chance of doing better in college. This article then goes on to state that gappers “value their education more; they are more persistent in their university studies and activities, and they become more organized as they progress through university life” (Taking a Gap Year…). These students not only had better grades, but also better skills that would help them even after college. This same article quotes David Curtis, a professor at Flinders University as saying, “‘the key indicator of gap year usefulness is this- a lack of clarity about academic intentions’” (Taking a Gap Year…). If a student is unsure about their academic intentions, it would make sense that this student would struggle. Once this student has had an opportunity to take a year off and discover exactly what they would be more focused and do better in college. It is amazing how many students change their majors once they reach college and how many times they change. This is exemplified in the statistic that “in 2000, 10% of doctors questioned at the end of their first post graduate year of training in the UK were considering leaving medicine” (Paterson-Brown). If these students had taken a gap year, they would have had time to figure out their exact academic intentions and would have spent less time studying a field that they end up being unhappy in. Having these clearer academic intentions would put the students into the fields they are truly passionate about. Once students are studying something they truly care about, they will be much more motivated and will do much better in their
The article “Taking a Gap Year: It could be the Best Lesson in the World” describes how research shows that students who take a gap year have a large chance of doing better in college. This article then goes on to state that gappers “value their education more; they are more persistent in their university studies and activities, and they become more organized as they progress through university life” (Taking a Gap Year…). These students not only had better grades, but also better skills that would help them even after college. This same article quotes David Curtis, a professor at Flinders University as saying, “‘the key indicator of gap year usefulness is this- a lack of clarity about academic intentions’” (Taking a Gap Year…). If a student is unsure about their academic intentions, it would make sense that this student would struggle. Once this student has had an opportunity to take a year off and discover exactly what they would be more focused and do better in college. It is amazing how many students change their majors once they reach college and how many times they change. This is exemplified in the statistic that “in 2000, 10% of doctors questioned at the end of their first post graduate year of training in the UK were considering leaving medicine” (Paterson-Brown). If these students had taken a gap year, they would have had time to figure out their exact academic intentions and would have spent less time studying a field that they end up being unhappy in. Having these clearer academic intentions would put the students into the fields they are truly passionate about. Once students are studying something they truly care about, they will be much more motivated and will do much better in their