If they tell us that a gap year is a waste of time, it's not true. If we plan it well, it can be the most productive year of our life.
The best moment
There are two key moments in the life of every student when it is truly important to consider the possibility of taking a gap year: after finishing high school and just before starting college or after finishing college, when we already have the university degree, but before doing the master's degree. It turns out that opting for a gap year has many advantages and can give us a good foundation to face college or the master's degree with much clearer ideas and essential knowledge for our future. Uncertain futures
Every time we have to decide what to do with our present so that something good happens in a mysterious future time, our heads explode. And it's normal: it's too much responsibility on our shoulders. The way things are sometimes presented, it seems that we are constantly facing crossroads that could make us happy and live a life of opulence if we choose well, or on the contrary, we could end up starving under a bridge. The truth is that making the right choice is important, but it is not as urgent as they want us to believe, there is not only one good choice, and the decisions we make are not irrevocable either. In any case, if we are not sure or think that certain experiences would help us before starting college, a gap year is undoubtedly a very interesting idea. A gap year makes us mature
We have just finished high school and we still don't know much about what it means to work or what it means to be independent, and yet we have to know what we want to do for the rest of our lives. It's complicated. The truth is that we lack experience, and if we don't have everything very clear from the beginning, it is logical that we do not feel prepared to make such a decision. A gap year can be a perfect solution to add some maturity to our life curriculum, because this year is not meant for us to sit on the couch thinking about life, but to live it; a gap year is a year of life experiences. A year to grow and mature. A gap year does not mean stopping studying
It is also not a year to lose the habit of studying or to spend it contemplating the kitchen tiles, but it should be a year of learning. Let's not confuse a gap year with a year of vacation because they are two completely different things. For example, to learn or improve a language that we will later need in college and in our future job, to take a course that will help us in our studies later on, or to learn something that may not be useful for our future studies but that will serve as valuable learning and provide us with a valuable experience. And what if we know that we are going to study Physics but before that, we would like to spend a year studying music theory and giving guitar lessons? Well, a gap year is also for that. Explore the world
Of course, taking a gap year to travel the world is not something that everyone can afford... or maybe they can. It all depends on how we plan it. As it is logical, not everyone can spend a year going from plane to plane and from hotel to hotel, but that is not a useful gap year, it is an excessively long vacation for the wealthy. What almost everyone can afford is to apply for a course in a foreign country and request a scholarship, work as an au pair, go to Australia to work in the countryside, work in any fast food establishment in Europe, etc. Not only will we be able to travel, but we will also be able to save money and start college the following year with a small fund, extensive knowledge of English or other languages, and the experience of having worked, an activity that has the invaluable gift of giving us a strong desire to study.
