Nearing the middle or end of the fall semester, there is a question that arises for those in their third and fourth years: what are you going to do after your program? The question holds a lot of weight because it isn’t just about what you’ve learned in your program, it’s about the rest of your life. Some people, I find, are lucky. They knew what they wanted to do with their life ever since they were little, or they were just lucky to have a flexible brain that allowed them to comprehend many things, and therefore be good at them. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the lucky ones. Whenever the conversation changed to applying for graduate school or the second diploma in my final year of university, I turned into the quietest person in the room. Everyone made it feel simple and easy, like it was the only option they had. I was fortunate enough to have a choice in whether or not I would take a gap year. However, it was non-negotiable that I went back to school for something beyond my first undergraduate degree. In the end, I chose to take a gap year between my first undergraduate program and the one I’m studying now. Here are the main reasons why I decided to take a gap year and what I have learned since then:
I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my future:
When I was in my first year, I could have rattled off at least twenty careers that I would have loved, but as I approached my senior year, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do. When I started to question myself, I felt pressured to have already known what I wanted. Otherwise, what was I doing? Before I pigeon-hole myself into a career I disliked, I wanted to take a year off to explore different avenues and get more experience related to what I thought I wanted to do. The more activities and jobs I took on, the more my goals were narrowed down. With time, my confusion slowly disappeared.
I had a non-academic plan that I wanted to carry out:
As a student, I felt there wasn’t enough time in the year to do everything I wanted. The only breaks I had were for the summer, which I used for working. I, however, have always been a huge traveller. My family is from Vietnam, so every couple of years, we take a flight to go visit them. Since starting university, I had not seen my extended family in well over four years, and a gap year would be the only opportunity when I get to see them. I also wanted to travel to Europe. It was at the top of my bucket list for years, and during my year long break, I not only visited Europe, but I visited about eight or nine different countries. It was as beautiful as I thought it would be, and looking back at it, I know now that if I had gone to school immediately after my senior year of my first undergraduate degree, I would have been stuck in the same routine of simply working during the summer.
I wanted to be financially stable enough to afford a second degree:
Despite the amount of travelling I did throughout the year (which was a lot), I was able to save up a lot of the money I made from the two jobs I worked at throughout the year. Since I had been insecure and unsure of my first undergraduate degree, I did not want my parents to pay for my education a second time, especially if I was still unsure when going into my current program. So, I took up as many jobs as I could to maximize how much money I could make. It worked out well, and I did not need the financial assistance I once did. The whole experience made me feel a lot more independent than I thought I was, which was a plus for me.
I needed a break:
The last reason why I took a gap year was because I needed a break. In my last two years of my first undergraduate degree, I struggled to find time for myself. I knew if I went into another program immediately afterwards, I would be too burnt out to do well, and if I wasn’t going to do well, I didn’t find a point in starting a new program. I took the year to recuperate and do everything that I loved to do without the added on academic stress of homework and assignments and really took a moment to breathe and appreciate life for what it was.
There are a lot of factors to keep in mind when choosing to do a gap year, or multiple gap years. I was lucky enough to benefit from the choices I made, and I believe it came down to what I knew I wanted and needed from that gap year and used every second of it to my advantage. I would and could never negatively look down at the time without thinking about all the outcomes it produced.