What is a Gap Year

Posted on June 18, 2011 by admin

Simply defined, a gap year is a significant period of time that provides a gap in your life.  The term is most commonly applied to time “on” taken between high school and college, or a year “off” during college – during which you generally do something other than traditional academics in a classroom setting.   This time is generally used to explore the world, do a variety of real activities, then reflect and prepare for the next purposeful step in their life.

Prior to 1985 or so, the concept of a gap year was mostly unknown in the United States.   If you were making “normal” progress with your education, it looked something like this:

In this scenario, it wasn’t until your junior year that it was accepted to study abroad, or to learn in some way that was out of the box – though generally you just traded in a classroom in the U.S. for one in Salamanca, Spain, for example.

With the idea of a gap year gaining understanding – particularly in the past 8 years, this has become an accepted path for your education:

 

In this progression, it has become more accepted to take a year to mature, explore interests, gain self-esteem, travel, work, do internships and volunteer exchanges.   Unfortunately, today’s model still defines the gap year in reaction to traditional classroom education –  within the limited idea that education isn’t generally valid unless it happens in a classroom.

LEAPNOW is involved with expanding the definition of a gap year to focus on the wholeness of the human being as a primary goal of the gap period, and to remove the assumption that classroom learning is the highest form of learning.

 

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How to set up your own Gap Year

Posted on June 18, 2011 by admin

How to set up your own Gap Year:

With some work on the part of students and their parents, and with the help of the amazing resources available on the Internet, it is now within your reach to set up your own “time on.”

Important questions to answer when thinking about “time on:”

  • How much time is available to you? A summer? A semester? A full year?
  • How much money do you have available to you? Include airfare, spending $$, & activities.  It works well to structure “time on” in 3-month blocks – particularly if you wish to save money.    Three months is usually the minimum amount of time that you need to give in order to get room and board from an organization – enough time for you to be useful to them.  The more time you can give, the more likely you are to receive support from an organization – you become useful to them.
  • Do you want to travel with a group or alone? Or some combination of the two?  For students who aren’t used to traveling it can be very helpful to take a hybrid approach – start with a semester or summer of organized group travel, then do one or two three-month internships in the second part of your time on.   Such an year might look like this:

Sept – December :  Travel with an organized group

Christmas break: Home for the holidays – make some money, ground and re-load

Jan – March  3-month volunteer stint somewhere      This could also be a period of work to fund the year.

April – June     3-month internship, or two months and a month of travel.

  • Do you want a lot of structure or less structure? It is a good idea to start with more structure, then as the year progresses, increase initiative required & decrease structure.
  • Do you want to do a variety of things or just one thing? Most people want to do a variety of things.
  • Do you need to build in time to work to make money?
  • Do you want to include time to be a tourist or to wander?
  • What do you want to be doing?  What do you want to accomplish?

 

If you aren’t willing or able to do the work needed to set up your own “time on,” there are organizations dedicated to setting up structured “time on” for you for a fee.   They may charge you per placement, or a flat fee for a set period of time.   Their experience can give you a sense of security and they may be able to save you money by helping you find situations that pay or give room and board in exchange for work.

If you don’t know what you want to do, think about the following questions:

  • Urban or rural?
  • US or abroad?
  • Where do I feel called to go, or where do I want to go?   Is there someplace on the planet I feel pulling me?
  • Do I want to work with people, or not?
  • Do I want to work with animals, plants, the land?
  • Is there a language I wish to learn?
  • If money were no object, what would you do?
  • Are you willing to serve others?   Do physical labor?

Give particular attention to transitions.  You are most vulnerable when in transition.   It may make sense to pay extra to have someone meet you at the airport you fly into.  Make sure you have a backup plan – such as a  hotel near the airport to check into if you miss your connection.

To save money, you can do the following:

  • Stay in this hemisphere – to keep airfare costs down.   String a series of internships together in a region to keep airfares to a minimum.   Find people who can donate their frequent flyer miles to you.
  • Work in the areas of social service, teaching, agriculture, environmental work, construction, outdoor and manual work, work with wildlife, or hotel work.   These all tend to be situations that can offer room or room and food in exchange for your labor.
  • Consider working where you can legally work for pay – in the U.S., the UK, Australia.
  • Set up an internship or volunteer stint through a foreign-based volunteer placement agency – they will generally charge much less than a US-based organization.

One way to get oriented and grounded in a country is to start with a period of language study.  Plan on two weeks and up if you are brushing up a language, a month or longer of intensive study if you need to gain enough proficiency to get around comfortably.     Language schools usually can set up stays with host families, and often can set up internships for you.

Do your due diligence.  Make sure you can get names and contact information of others who have worked with the organization that you want to work with – then call or email them about the support they received.  There is no better source of information than someone like you who went before.

This will get you started thinking about the process.   Stay tuned for a blog entry devoted to available resources that will help you set yourself up.

 

 

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Why take a Gap Year?

Posted on June 17, 2011 by admin

Why take a Gap Year?

There are as many reasons to take a gap year as there are reasons for living, or for getting out of bed in the morning.   Here is a partial list:

  • Why NOT take a gap year?   There isn’t a compelling reason not to take one.
  • Life isn’t a race, college will still be there a year later.
  • Get out of the stale classroom – rather than learning by sitting in a room for 16 years in a row.
  • Get away from parents, friends and your hometown, and put it in perspective – discover the difference between what you have inherited, and what is essentially YOURS.
  • Explore learning in different modes and different environments
  • Grow a year older and hopefully, in the process, wiser or at least more practical
  • Experience other cultures, and see the world
  • Learn another language
  • Try on possible career choices in real time – try on the work represented by different college majors
  • Find and explore at least one passion
  • Try on new roles and identities. Experiment!
  • Discover new talents and skills
  • Take risks
  • Give your parents financial breathing room between children
  • Take time to earn money for college
  • Learn about practical economics
  • Learn practically about the world of work

 

  • Become more interesting for your college essays
  • Recover from high school pressure and burnout
  • Be responsible for taking initiative for your own education and experience
  • Take advantage of one of the last accepted times to be irresponsible without feeling too guilty
  • Let the well fill back up
  • Feel the wind in your hair
  • Explore what you love and discover a worthwhile reason for attending college

 

  • Break through our uniquely American sense of entitlement and realize how materially blessed we are.
  • Do something for someone else – be of service
  • Experience a greater variety of ecosystems – deserts, jungles, icebergs, et
  • Be treated as an adult – perhaps for the first time.  Practice being an adult.
  • Build self-esteem by overcoming real obstacles and achieving real successes
  • Learn by doing what adults do.

 

  • Live on your own and show yourself that you can deal with loneliness and adversity
  • Learn to structure your own time
  • Take some time to wander in the world

  • Escape from deadlines, other people’s expectations, and outer pressures
  • Develop a stronger sense of yourself
  • Find out how big the world is, and gain a sense of my own insignificance
  • Get out of the educational trance and learn that you are responsible for your own learning
  • Have psychological time and space to re-imagine your own life.
  • Differentiate yourself from parents, friends and your cultural assumptions
  • Learn how to live, work and travel independently
  • Don’t waste your parents money if you don’t want to be in college, or if you don’t have a good reason for being there.

 

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Catching babies in West Africa

Posted on April 13, 2009 by admin

From a LEAPYEAR student who has been working alongside midwives in Ghana, West Africa in the final days of her internship.

I am writing you with only one week left in Ghana. It has been such an incredible adventure, I feel truly changed and moved by the experiences I have had and the lessons I have learned along the way. Although things started out a little rocky with my relationship to Ghana, I think we have come to a pretty good compromise, and I feel true affection and respect for this country that I have spent the last ten weeks exploring. There are many aspects of Ghana that I still don’t fully understand or agree with, but there are some truly striking and special aspects that have deeply touched me and brought me to realize how beautiful and vibrant the people and culture are.

Last Friday the tenth I was able to catch two babies in the labor ward of the hospital I have been working in. It was a hectic afternoon at the hospital, with all the beds in the delivery and labor rooms full (nine beds in total), and only one fully qualified midwife and one in training. I was shadowing the senior midwife for the afternoon whose name is Christine and who has been practicing for over fifteen years. She is a tall, strong, and graceful woman of over fifty who wears a lace head cap, small eye glasses, and pale blue scrubs. She has taken me under her wing for the past week or so and invited me to get more involved in some of the births by shadowing her.. As soon as she came into the hospital, there were already a couple of women ready to move to second stage. She brought a young woman named Rose into the delivery room and told me to glove up and put a plastic apron over my white scrubs. And then I was catching the fuzzy head of a baby girl and Christine was talking me through the motions of delivering the body, and starting up the beautiful slippery bundle I held in my hands. When she let out a strong cry, I couldn’t believe the miracle I had just witnessed. I have seen over twenty births since coming to Ghana, and yet being the one to catch this young soul was the most incredible sensation. Baby Rose was born a healthy 3.1kg and her mother recovered from the delivery quickly .

I caught another baby only forty minutes later. A big baby boy with a head full of curly hair. I didn’t even have time to be coached through this birth, because I walked into the labor room only in time to see one of the “first stage” women named Comfort, with the head already protruding. I had already delivered the rest of his body before Christine came rushing in, beaming at me and laughing as I held his little body in my hands. I assisted with four other births that afternoon, and the whole experience was truly magical. I have been surrounded by birth and babies throughout my time in Ghana, but it was my deepest wish that I would be able to deliver a baby before I left. I have been riding the rush of joy I got from the experience and I feel so grateful to have been able to share such a sacred moment with those two women and their newborn babies.

With only one week left, I am realizing how much Ghana has permeated me. I have come to truly love this country, in spite of some of the resistance I felt in the first few weeks of living here. There are many practices in the hospital that have disturbed me and made me question my own beliefs and how I can influence those of others in a conscious and aware way. Being met with so much need and sometimes desperation in the patients of La General Hospital has made me examine what I want my role to be in the realm of medicine in the developing world. I recently read a beautiful book by Tracy Kidder called Mountains Beyond Mountains that was recommended and gifted to me a few weeks ago. It is about an Infectious Disease specialist Paul Farmer, who takes third world medicine on as his life’s passion and work. It is a truly inspiring and moving tale. I realize that one of the reasons that I came to Ghana and decided to work in a hospital around birth is because I wanted to see whether this is a part of my life that I want to pursue. The joy and accomplishment I have experienced in the process has revealed that working around medicine could be a deeply gratifying field of work for me, and that there is nothing more rewarding than working for those who truly need your services. I am still not completely sure how it will play out in my future, but midwifery and medicine are both passions that I hope to pursue and I am so grateful to this experience for illuminating the joy that I can gain from helping others.

All that said, I am so excited to be returning home soon. This has been a very full experience, and I have been so saturated in babies and birth that I am running the risk of trying to bring one home with me if I stay much longer. I am looking forward to continuing my education with a new angle on what I want out of my life and where I am headed.

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Quotes about education

Posted on August 23, 2008 by admin

A couple of provocative quotes about education:

On your own, you have to face the responsibility for how you spend time. But in school you don’t. What they make you do may obviously be a waste but at least the responsibility isn’t charged to your account. School in this respect is, once again, like the army or jail. Once you’re in, you may have all kinds of problems but freedom isn’t one of them.

Jerry Farber

Modern schools and universities push students into habits of depersonalized learning, alienation from nature and sexuality, obedience to hierarchy, fear of authority, self-objectification, and chilling competitiveness. These character traits are the essence of the twisted personality-type of modern industrialism. They are precisely the character traits needed to maintain a social system that is utterly out of touch with nature, sexuality and real human needs.

Arthur Evans

The function of high school, then, is not so much to communicate knowledge as to oblige children finally to accept the grading system as a measure of their inner excellence. And a function of the self-destructive process in American children is to make them willing to accept not their own, but a variety of other standards, like a grading system, for measuring themselves. It is thus apparent that the way American culture is now integrated it would fall apart if it did not engender feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. Jules Henry

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End of a LEAPYEAR, start of an adventure.

Posted on July 21, 2008 by admin

Recent LEAPYEAR graduate Kyle O’Brien sums up how he feels as he ends his LEAPYEAR journey. Kyle spent the fall semester traveling and studying in Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica, and worked underwater to protect the marine environment off the coast of Madagascar for his spring 08 internship.

May 2008

Nine month, six countries, and more than enough experiences for a lifetime, it’s hard to believe my LEAPYEAR journey is coming to an end. The fact that my life journey is just beginning is even harder to believe. My accomplishments over the past year cannot be measured in the classroom. I have obtained a worldview, climbed a volcano, found love, SCUBA dived in Madagascar, learned a language, stood on pyramids, learned to live consciously, hugged a baobab tree, and the list goes on. I have been reborn a thousand times and I reflect that change. My connection with myself and everyone and everything else that exists in this world feels natural and true. My awareness of myself in this work has never felt so clear, so real, and so constant.
Challenges and mistakes have become friends whom I love dearly. Integrity has become my source when I need balance. Questions have become my guide and answers have become stepping stones to bigger and more specific questions. Life is my journey, my journey has a purpose. I have discovered my personal legend; I have never felt so enthused to dive into the unknown.

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Breathing deeply in Vietnam

Posted on April 18, 2008 by admin

An amazing email from a student to her group as she contemplates completing her solo internship working with autistic children in Vietnam, and returning to the U.S. to rejoin her group for their final retreat.    This post demonstrates the kind of practical skills that she has learned to master difficult emotions and states of mind – as well as her heightened consciousness about completing an experience before moving on to another:

I really worked myself into quite the spot last night.  I called my mother and started bawling about how out of control I felt and how I was feeling so much resistance to writing and to completion in general.  She wasn’t able to talk for long and left me with these words “stop resisting the resistance”.  I know Ive shared this many times before and maybe now it starts to sound repetitive, but really it came back to acceptance.  So instead of continuing to spiral out of control with my thoughts, I sat down on my bed took a deep breath and said, I accept it.

All of it.

The noise, the heat, the resistance.

And then I meditated for 30 mintues or so, following my breath at first and then repeating the tara mantra (learned during the fall semester in India) because as I calmed down, I noticed the overwhelming feeling of fear that collects in my stomach. Then I lay down and started taking really deep breaths, breathing in to my fear.  For several moments I felt
completely overtaken by the feeling, but then it passed and I immediately felt this tingling sensation all over my body.  And I realized that behind my fear there was something else.
I did Reiki (learned in India) on myself and woke up this morning feeling regrounded.

I have resistance to completion, to endings and transitions.  This is the point in time where Im supposed to pack up my bags and move on to the next place without saying goodbye.  Just like I did when we moved to Rhode island and then to Northampton and then every time I switched schools.  I’ve always left without completion, without facing the things I’m running away from.

As far as feeling safe in the group, I also had a realization the other night.  I dont think Ive ever felt so vulnerable, yet so safe on a group.  I’ve shared parts of myself with all of you that up until this year had been locked away in a box and labeled “do not open”.  That’s where I think the feeling unsafe comes from.  My practice before LEAPYEAR was to interact superficially.  I felt safe, but miserable.  There are definately still places where I am not quite willing to be vulnerable in the group and that’s where my concentration has been over the past week or so.

Anyways, whats my point in sharing this? I guess its just a reminder to myself and to everyone that conscious living is a constant process.  I had this idea that I was going to finish LEAPYEAR completely transformed and perfected, all of my shadows left behind.  The truth is we never stop transforming.  Just like in meditation/Buddhist practice, there are the rare few that reach nirvana, but for the majority its a lifelong journey, in which new challenges/lessons are revealed to us everyday.

Back in Hoi An, I chose to start loving myself unconditionally.  This doesn’t mean that I don’t still struggle with confidence and with self-acceptance or that I don’t have moments where I feel totally lost or frozen in anxiety.  Somedays I fall off the bandwagon, but each time I do I learn something new.

So, I’m letting go of the idea that I need to show up at Maacama (LEAPNOW’s California campus) with all my ducks in a row, perfectly together.   And I don’t expect any of you to show up perfectly chiseled and put together either.  Just
show up as yourself and I’ll try my hardest to come as me.

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Vanquishing Procrastination in Australia

Posted on April 18, 2008 by admin

A post from a student, interning at a dive shop and dive boat on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.   He has struggled with procrastination for many years.   Finding traction and motivation within during the solo internship!

I just wanted to let you all know that I’ve got through a big mental block, the mindset of “I have all this work to do and I can’t do it,” and successfully risen to the occasion. I discovered that once I actually started doing the work, it wasn’t as much as it seemed it was.

The work:
Ethnology project outline – rough (done)
Book reports (done)
Life Path Questions (done)
Conscious Living (done)
Ethnology project outline – final (done)
Ethnology project Intro + Topic sentences (done)
Ethnology project final (turned in a day early! Didn’t see that coming)

How’s that for an accomplishment?  I’m pleased with me.  So I felt the need to share.  Heh, sorry.   I don’t actually like boasting, it makes me feel embarrassed, but this is the first time I’ve been able to feel genuinely proud of myself, academically, in… 6 years? 7?

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Marine Conservation on Madagascar

Posted on April 18, 2008 by admin

A description from a student of his Spring 2008 internship activities working to protect the marine environment on the coast of Madagascar (an island off the east coast of Africa)!
Life here is turning out to be wonderful.  Everyday I fall asleep and wake up to the sound of the ocean, it doesn’t get much better than that.  Every day I SCUBA dive at least once, mostly twice now since this is my 2nd expedition which makes me local around these parts.   When I dive I usually am doing science-related work, though every once in a while we get a recreational dive. I mostly do invertebrate, coral, and fish transects (a transect is a survey of a given area of the reef.) Every Sunday and Wednesday I teach English to a variety of men and women who are training to become guides for tourists here in Anadavadoaka.   I also help all the Malagasy scientists here with their individual work and mini-expeditions (always a lot of fun).

It turns out that my sponsor organization does much more than marine science related conservation.   A few things they have gotten involved with is training guides, selling efficient wood burning and solar stoves (carbon offsetting), teaching
embroidery for women, family planning, scholarships for children in the school they built (based upon environmental awareness), and social economic surveys run by the Malagasy staff .   Overall, they are doing a fantastic job and I am very proud to be a part of the team.

On another note,  I have been doing great with my daily practices and I have fallen in love with the Artist’s Way.  I have realized that I truly get out what I put in, a lesson I have been taught all my life and have sort of half-assed realized in the
past.  Now, I feel a great sense of responsibility to fulfil my own desires and to live a full life.  I always feel so much better after a day when I accomplish more than I set out to do.  My strength as an individual has never been so clear to me.

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Tourist versus Traveler

Posted on April 18, 2008 by admin

Reflections from a LEAPYEAR student wrapping up her internship in Nepal.   Her spring internship was focused on study of Tibetan Buddhism at a monastery outside of Kathmandu:

I just took two days and went out to Pokhara, a lakeside town 8 hours outside of Kathmandu. 8 hours by old, crappy bus and horrible, curvy mountain roads. I was thinking that if this were in the US, it would probably take 2 hours to get there. Anyways, Pokhara was very nice. I rented a kayak and spent an afternoon on the lake.  I also went up to this peak where
you can watch the sunrise over the Annapurna range.  It was very beautiful, but I was sharing the sunrise with about three busloads of other tourists. There were so many people!  I didn’t get too annoyed though. I have a pet peeve of when people scoff at tourists and forget that they too, are a tourist. The girl who told me about the spot said, “Oh it’s really great, but there’s tons of tourists snapping away and you have to wait for them all to go away before it’s nice.” She said this with some disdain. I wanted to say, “And what exactly do you think you are? A native Nepali?” haha.   I think it’s funny how people like to have disdain for other tourists and forget how hypocritical that is.

So I’m having a nice last couple of days. I’ve just been all by myself since I left for Pokhara and I’ve really enjoyed it. One of my friends from home asked me, “Aren’t you lonely?” And I’ve been thinking about that question… I actually have a really nice time with just myself. It was only for a couple of days, but I enjoy it.  I don’t mind sitting at restaurants eating by myself.  I feel kind of free and restful.  Not that I want to spend all my time alone, but it’s really nice for awhile.

The point is, I was happy to realize that and see how well I do just on my own, because I think that that means I like myself and am able to just be with myself, so I feel like I’m pretty mentally healthy.  I’m happy about that.

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