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Gap Year – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for this month’s conversation, Gap Year. So I thought that I would let you know that I love the idea of a gap year, or two years, or three years…two or three gap years or more. I love that idea because I’ll tell you when I got, when I finished high school and started college, or university as you might know it, I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

So I really think that having, if I had had a gap year in between high school and college, or even more, two or three years, that it would have really have helped me. So I started college and, like I said, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So I started trying to think of ideas. Once I was in school, at the very beginning, y’know, I needed to so I would know what kind of classes to start taking.

So the only thing that I could think of was that I liked animals. But I thought that it would be too difficult and too many years of college to become a veterinarian or animal doctor. So I started thinking maybe marine biology, which would be studying animals that live in the ocean basically, or I was even thinking primatology, which is studying primates. Primates being like monkeys.

So it actually kind of changed from first being marine biology, it pretty quickly changed, like my first year in college to primatology, y’know, studying the behavior of monkeys. But that, y’know, I started taking…I needed a lot of science classes so I started taking them and realized, wow, these are really difficult for me. They’re much more difficult than the science classes I had in high school. Maybe this major, maybe getting a degree in primatology is not for me actually.

So I…and I’m a good, I was a good student, but it just…I don’t have that kind of mind, I guess, to be thinking in that way with, y’know, the science classes took for someone to be thinking. So I started thinking, alright what could I change to. So somehow it changed to, I changed my major, y’know, which is what I would get my degree in, I changed it to psychology.

And I think the reason, if I think back, the reason I changed it to psychology, psychology is the study of human behavior. I think I changed it to that because I realized that some people who study human behavior also study primates or monkeys because in some ways they are…they are the most similar animals to humans, closely related to humans.

So I changed to psychology and that’s what I ended up getting my four-year bachelor’s degree in was psychology. But when I finished school I had no idea what I was going to do with that degree. In fact, I really needed to continue on with school with my education to get either a master’s degree, going two more years, or to get a doctorate, going a total of four more years. And I tried to get into a doctorate program but I didn’t have the standardized test scores to get into a program like that.

So here I was with this bachelor’s degree in psychology, couldn’t really get a job doing much with it. I was having to put together a few jobs because they didn’t pay a lot of money. So I was working, I think, three different jobs that were related to my psychology degree but because they didn’t pay a lot of money I was, I don’t…I think I was working seven days a week. I didn’t even have a day off.

So I quickly realized, too, working these jobs that, eh, this just wasn’t really for me. It had nothing to do with what I first thought of doing with, or wanting to do with studying the behavior of animals. Y’know, here I was, one of the jobs I was working with people who had drinking, problems with drinking alcohol and, y’know, taking drugs.

Another job I had was giving. . . . I worked for a psychologist giving psychological tests to his clients, which I thought, felt was kind of boring. And, oh, a third job I had was working with women who had been abused or beaten by their husbands. So that actually was my favorite job out of the three. But still, it…I wasn’t passionate about it.

So, y’know, I…looking back if I had had a gap year or two or three, however long it took, it would have allowed me to possibly travel, travel the world. And what that could have done was really open me up to new things that I had never been exposed to before, y’know, that I’d never been introduced to before. Or, I find, too, a lot of times when I travel, go to other countries and travel around, it really clears my head and makes me realize things that, y’know, it kind of clears away a lot of clutter, things that get kind of stuck in my head.

So I’m able to focus in on things I really want to do. And then usually when I come back home, come back to the United States, I’m able to accomplish those things. So travel could have provided that, clearing my head or introducing me to new things. Or if I’d worked an internship, that could have really helped me.

An internship is basically a job, it doesn’t last very long, but it’s on the job training. So it usually doesn’t pay a lot of money but you’re getting skills and learning about a professional type of job. It’s a great way for someone who’s maybe kind of interested in…in working a job, y’know, in this field as a career, it gives them an opportunity to see if it’s really something they would want to do.

So, y’know, if I had taken a gap year or more that I could have done an internship or I could have even have volunteered. You remember volunteer, volunteering is working for an organization, offering to work for free. So you’re not making money but it’s a way to…to get into an area to see if it’s something that you would want to do with your life, a job or work that you would want to do

Those things that I mentioned, job internship or volunteering, or traveling, all that done during a gap year could have helped me to really figure out what I wanted to do before starting college. And then, quite possibly, I would have started teaching a lot sooner instead of, many years later, getting a master’s degree in it and, y’know, starting to teach in schools and now having my own business.

It could have all happened a lot sooner. Maybe there would have been less wasted time. Y’know, I wouldn’t have gone all four years through college to have gotten a psychology degree that really didn’t do much for me. But who knows? Who knows? Maybe if I had had time off, y’know, a gap year, maybe I would have ended up doing something completely different than teaching English. You never know.

Alright, so is gap year, is that something that people do in your country? And if so, is it something that you did? Did you take time off, if you went to college or university, did you take time off between high school and college? Did you take a gap year, or more? And I’m just curious…are you doing, right now, with your life, your job, your career, is it something that you’re passionate about. Why don’t you share this on the Ning site.

Alright, that’s all for now, for this month for this lesson, Gap Year. I’ll see you next time.