Malia Obama had people awaiting her college decision as if they were waiting for a five-star athlete’s. It came out that Malia Obama was to attend Harvard University. Great, right? The catch is that Malia is going to take a ‘gap year’ and start school in the fall of 2017. Needless to say, the internet blew up over this.
A gap year is when a student takes a year between graduating high school and starting college. Most students travel, work, or do volunteer work. Though it hasn’t been revealed what Malia is going to do with her gap year, it still had people questioning whether this is the right choice to make. Many people were criticizing her, saying things like “most kids don’t go back to school after taking a gap year” and “she’s encouraging other students to take a gap year.” Fox removed their comment section after getting racist comments attached to this.
While it is true that some people who take a gap year put off school all together, not everyone does. Most spend their time wisely and when they start college they’re fresh from their break and often have time to figure out what they want to study. While the other end of this has students spending their time working at McDonald’s instead of doing something useful with their time, this doesn’t make gap years bad.
Malia Obama got into Harvard. This is being overlooked in all the talk about her gap year. She should be congratulated for such an accomplishment. Though you may say she only got in because her father is POTUS, we can assume that Malia has to have some intelligence in order to get in too. How many of us can say we got accepted to Harvard? Harvard encourages their students to take a gap year to relax and gain experiences before starting school. It’s no secret that Harvard is not only hard to get into, but also hard to stay enrolled. College is hard. Sometimes it’s good to take a break from school before diving right into hard work.
Taking a gap year can be good for traveling, finding out what you’re passionate about, and help you better understand yourself. The gap year can be very beneficial if used wisely and there’s no shame in taking a year off before starting school. A lot of young people look up to Malia and they may decide to follow her and take a gap year. So what? If they want to take a break from school to better themselves in the long run, I don’t see what’s wrong with that.
There’s no doubt that Malia is going to make good use of her time off. She’s already had several internships working for TV shows. When she starts college in 2017, she’s going to be another year older, another year wiser. Taking a gap year can help students become more mature which will help them better adapt to college life.
Hopefully students will learn from her how to find yourself before college, and how to find out what you’re passionate about. This will only help student better prepare for the work ahead of them and be ready to commit to a major as well as find out what they want to do with their lives.
Congratulations, Malia for getting into Harvard. Enjoy your gap year and try to make the most of it.
Images:
http://cdn29.elitedaily.com/content/uploads/2016/05/01131113/gapyear-800…