Why a Gap Year May Not Be for You: Advice on Making Big Decisions

Approaching the end of a long educational journey and deciding which direction to move in can be an overwhelming moment for many of us. Upon graduating high school, we have a real choice about what the next year of our lives is going to look like for the first time.

Will we continue studying? If so, will we enter university right away, or take a gap year? When we do go to university, where will we go and what will we study? How will we finance ourselves? What kind of environment do we thrive in, and how can we truly understand the answers to these questions beforehand?

While such choices are an exciting prospect, there is also a certain anxiety which inevitably underlies this need to choose for oneself. When the abrupt realization that our future is in our own hands begins to settle in, deeper questions about what intrigues us, what work we find meaningful, and what kind difference we see ourselves making in the world present themselves. Suddenly, a relatively simple and practical choice about where to go to school in a few months becomes a pinnacle turning point; a paused moment in our life stories from which we may fall into bad habits and unsuitable occupations, or we may drastically accelerate the arrival of success and become responsible adults, capable of exercising our freedom effectively. All in all, graduation has a tendency to induce anxiety about far more than just the immediate future. As a result, the course of action we choose to take after receiving that diploma can be an overwhelming one, to say the very least.

Personally, the decision I made over a year prior to when I would graduate was to take a gap year. I had my heart set on attending a wonderful university in a foreign country and earning a degree as a completely self-sufficient young woman; in my eyes, a gap year was the necessary “evil”preceding the fulfillment of this dream, in which I would work constantly to save money and be able to tackle the application process properly.

This was the ideal I had set for myself, ignoring a number of troubling complications: money, what my gap year would actually look like, and the nature of my academic interests and personality chief among them. Eventually, as the end of my high school career became progressively nearer and the need to firmly decide more imminent, I decided to accept my offer from McGill to study a range of social science and humanities subjects. While this decision required the surrender of a long-term and deeply rooted dream, it also brought great satisfaction as the path of my near (and distant) future became much clearer.

The idea of a gap year began to lose its appeal as the strength of my academic interests grew, the appeal of Canadian universities increased, and the impracticality of international undergraduate studies to my own particular circumstances became more apparent. I realized that I wanted to earn an interdisciplinary degree that allowed me to learn about topics in a variety of fields and from a wide range of perspectives; I did not want to be confined to a single area of study and a single way of looking at the world academically, as may have been the case at an international school where the degree program I was interested in was highly specialized and had less room for electives than Canadian undergraduate degrees do. In addition to this, the tuition rates and my financial circumstances had an unbridgeable gap between them.

Furthermore, I realized that I would be incredibly unhappy seeing all my friends and peers beginning university in the fall while I worked tirelessly at a job I did not find any particular value in, just to earn enough money to survive a year at an international school.

Watching others thrive at university studying subjects they were passionate about while I would hardly have time to pick up a book seemed an isolating and extremely counterintuitive position to place myself in, especially as someone deeply drawn to knowledge and ideas. The combination of these factors caused my original dream to drift away and a new future to float into my horizons: the simpler, more obvious, and ‘easier’ option of going to a Canadian university straight out of high school.

Two main lessons came from this decision making process: first, it is completely normal for your plans for the future to take a U-turn at the last second, and second, keeping your options open is crucial in any major transition period in your life. Letting go of what I thought I wanted and welcoming an entirely different future demonstrated to me that sometimes an “easier” path is the right one to take. Just because something is more challenging does not necessarily mean it is more worthwhile or a greater feat to have accomplished.

Rather than setting your sights on the most dramatic and far-fetched possibility imaginable, considering all your options equally—including those right in front of you—will ultimately lead to the best decision. Focus on what your interests and passions are, where your financial circumstances allow you to go, and what environment you see yourself thriving in.

From my experience, all the other factors are irrelevant complications fogging your vision of where you want to be. While it is important not to oversimplify and the factors affecting your particular decision, as these are entirely personal, I believe that these considerations are by far the most important.

If you are battling between taking a gap year and starting university right away, I am not attempting to deter you from a gap year; however, here are some important questions to ask yourself:

• Are you someone who enjoys learning and feels lost without reading about new ideas and information on a regular basis?
• Is academia and/or education a fundamental aspect of your identity?
• Will taking a gap year improve your character or circumstances substantially in the long term?
• Whatever plans you may have for the year, will you be better off during your degree and/or in your career for having taken it?
• Are you passionate about a subject right now, such as English literature, history, or chemistry? If so, will deterring your study of it for a whole year affect your happiness and level of performance in it? If not, will the gap year play a role in helping you to fall in love with a subject or hobby, more so than a year of classes?

These questions may help you to discern whether a gap year would be a benefit or a detriment to your long-term goals and immediate happiness.

While many excellent things can be gained by taking a year off, gap years are certainly not the right choice for everyone and can easily become a waste of precious time.

For me, these questions make the decision crystal clear: I know exactly what I’m passionate about, what courses and degree programs are available to me, and where studying these subjects could take me in my career. So why would I put off the single occupation that has the greatest personal allure and an open door waiting for me? Even if you are clueless about what you want to study, most universities in Canada allow students to experiment with many different classes in their first year regardless, so you may be better off entering university directly after high school anyway. Study abroad opportunities are abundant in universities if travel is important to you, and working a job to gain experience and a source of income as a student is neither uncommon nor impractical. Do these factors change your considerations in any way?

The most important thing to remember in this tremendously exciting and moderately terrifying time is to keep your options open, focusing only on the factors that really matter when making decisions about the future path of your life.

While these choices may seem like everything, you have to realize that there are always numerous roads to success, and there is never a single option among the plethora of possibilities before you that can lead you to achieve everything you aspire to. Consider your options carefully, but don’t forget to breathe and acknowledge the variety of paths to the destination you seek. The road may look different than you anticipated, but whichever one you choose will ultimately get you where you want to go. That’s what really matters.