I am a firm believer that everyone should take a gap year after college. Personally, I never understood how college could be the peak of so many people’s lives, until I left. College is possibly one of the most exciting and free times in a person’s life.
You pick the exact classes that you are interested in and want to take. You get to build your schedule. Also, you decide whether you sleep in every morning, or you take all your classes on the same two days. In college, you have the freedom to get involved with anything easily since there’s a club for everything ever. College gives you the groundwork to build your life exactly how you want it. Once you graduate and start a 9-5, that freedom is snatched away from you forever. This is why you should take a gap year after college!
You will probably work a 9-5 for the rest of your life. Why not take one year for yourself?
Everyday, another company announces that they’re going fully back to the office. The likelihood of finding a remote job grows smaller day by day. That means, you’ll very likely start working full time, in the office, when you get your first corporate job.
When I did my senior internship with Penn State HR, I worked 8-5, or 8-4 if I worked through lunch. After I had the time to take a nap, get dinner with my friends, and even go out to the bar after work. Compared to my friends taking their last semester of classes, I didn’t mind since I was making money, and done around the same time they were.
Now
Now, my current job is 8-6. I am commuting until I can afford to live in NYC. It is almost a 2 hour train ride, one way. My life is consumed by work. When I get home, I really only have time to go to eat and go to bed. It feels like I’m living in the Apple TV show, Severance. Except I’m the version of me stuck at work.
What I’ve realized from my post grad friends, is that most people feel like there’s not enough time to do what you want. Or you don’t have enough energy, even if there’s time. This is why many people say that post grad life sucks. Compared to college, pretty much everything does to be honest!
Taking a gap year after college allows you to have a break to slow down and catch your breath during the biggest transitional period of your life. Whether you want to stay in your college town for an extra year, live at home and work part time, travel, volunteer, or to relax and apply to grad school, slowing down and figuring out what you want your life to look like going forward will set yourself up for long term success. Why not take one year for you? You’re going to be working for a long time – taking one year for you will not set you back.
Take Time to Travel
If you didn’t get the chance to study abroad during college, why not dedicate a year to exploring the year while you have the freedom to? Even if you did study abroad, maybe you got the travel bug and couldn’t get enough of it!
Traveling is what many people say they’ll do more of when they’re more settled into their career or have more money. Know this, not every trip has to be a vacation! There are tons of programs to travel or move abroad for varying durations, which I go into more depth here about! Traveling is one of the best things to do for a gap year after college.
You may think, but I don’t have anyone to go with! Honestly, even better! Nothing has made me grow more as a person, become more confident, empathetic, worldly, and trust myself more than solo traveling. If you are wondering, wait, how would you even do that? Look here for more information about how to make friends while traveling, where to stay, and here for my top solo travel destinations (where tons of people also go solo)!
If you take a gap year after college to travel, you will come out more resilient, more confident, and definitely happier than all your friends who chose not to. I cannot recommend this option enough! I personally joined a program to teach English in Spain, where I got to live in IBIZA for my gap year after college.
After graduation, every choice you make is setting the foundation for what the rest of your life will look like. Are you going to choose a boring job, then come home so tired that you scroll on your phone for hours? Because that’s not the start to any good book, movie, or life!
Get To Know YOU
College was great, because it had all the structures in place to help you create your life, classes you were interested in, community housing to meet others, clubs to get to know people with similar interest, a walkable campus, free time, nightlife and so much more. You enjoyed college because it was a life you built yourself.
Post graduation is the same idea, but there are no structures in place. This is the time where you are building what the rest of your life will look like! College is the first time you’re really making choices about your life, and after college is simply taking off the training wheels.
Taking a gap year after college takes the immense pressure off of immediately finding somewhere to live, a job (especially if you aren’t exactly sure what you want to do), and brainstorming what you truly want your life to look like.
If you’ve ever changed your mind about what you want to do with your life, don’t you think that might happen again, in some capacity however big or small? Most people haven’t ever been on their own with all the possibilities in the world in the palm of their hands. Most people don’t know what they actually want. Do you?
Taking a gap year after college can be the perfect time to really take some time to think about what comes next. Plus you could work a fun and easy job that you enjoy and relax!
Spend Time With Your Friends
College is the time you will be the closest with your friends. It might be the last time you live together, or even live in the same city or state. Everyone is going onto new things. It could be a job in a new city, moving back home, leaving the country, or starting grad school.
Suddenly, everyone will have different schedules, live far, and not have enough PTO to spend time together. The year following college will be the easiest year to see your college friends. Every following year will get more and more difficult. That’s why taking a gap year after college can be helpful. You can transition slowly into adulthood and have minimal constraints when it comes to hanging out with your friends.
You might be planning on moving in with your friend after college. Maybe you know you won’t be too far apart. Regardless of the situation, your friendship will change. In some way or another.
The best way to combat this, to maintain your friendship after college, is to plan for it.
Why YOU Should Take a Gap Year After College
College is the mid way point between your education ending and your time in the workforce starting. You will be working, with no summer break again (unless you become a teacher) for the next 40 years. Do you really want to rush into it? Taking a gap year after college might just be one of the best decisions you’ll ever make (I know it was for me). The future version of you will thank you!
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