Bridging the Gaps: Seniors Consider a Year to Explore Life Before College
By Samuel Pape ’08
Editor
As the class of 2008 begins to make the transition from high school to college, some in the class are preparing to travel, get jobs, or do service work as part of a gap year instead of matriculating this fall with their peers. These students defer a year at the college they have chosen and enroll a year later than they would have normally.
One common misconception associated with taking a gap year is the presupposition that the student did not get into college or got into a school that he or she had no desire to attend. Charlotte McCurdy ’08, who plans to take a gap year before enrolling at Yale, said that “those unaccustomed to the idea [of taking a gap year] squint and ask, ‘So where did you go wrong?’” Chris Douglas ’08, who is also deferring college for a year, agreed that there might be some misconceptions regarding gap years, but that many perceived them as “just a way to waste time and be lazy if you don’t feel like going to college.”
Instead of taking time off to reapply to a top choice or to indulge in sloth after four strenuous years at Choate, many students taking gap years plan on working, traveling, or doing some combination of both in order to pursue other interests before furthering their education. Dean Jacoby, the outgoing Director of College Counseling, said he took a gap year between Choate and college to “learn about setting my own personal agenda and working towards personal priorities that I controlled rather than those that were mandated.” In addition, he said he felt that the year in between high school and college is one of the only times in which students are free from the onerous requirements to “build a career, provide for a family, earn enough to pay for expensive accumulations of stuff we want—mortgage payments on a house, car payments, storage for furniture and personal possessions.”
For those taking gap years, the opportunities to travel and work are seemingly endless. McCurdy said she felt unbalanced after spending four years devoted solely to developing a sharp mind, and in order to “become a more whole human being I know that I need to exercise my soul by engaging in art and spiritual introspection.” In order to satisfy her spiritual and artistic needs, McCurdy plans to spend some of her time off studying the religious traditions and art of the Himalayas and living in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery.
Douglas, on the other hand, hopes to explore potential career options during his gap year. “I plan to get an internship in a pharmaceutical company or a medical consulting firm for the summer and early fall,” he said. Still others, like Chris Mitchell ’08, hope to take gap years to hone language skills. Mitchell, who will pursue foreign service at Georgetown, said he was considering taking a year off to refine his Spanish, as language is an important component of Georgetown’s program.
While many students are taking time off to pursue developing interests, Drew Yeager ’08 said he wants to take a gap year in order to rediscover his passion for learning. “I know that the grind of Choate has destroyed some of my desire to learn, so I’m hoping that a year off will sort of reignite my love of learning,” he said. Mr. Jacoby related a similar reason for taking a gap year: “At a certain point, it became more about doing work and trying to be good enough to get into college than education, and the learning became less personal and less something that I saw as under my control. I wanted to go to college in touch with my own sense of curiosity and intellectual inquiry.”
Regardless of the motivation for taking a gap year, it seems that students are taking years off at a higher frequency. Both Harvard and Princeton encourage students to consider a gap year when making their decision to enroll, and Princeton has even subsidized programs to pay for students’ gap year service projects. According to an April 21st article in the Yale Daily News, approximately 40 members of its class of 2011 took gap years; 50 to 70 typically take them at Harvard.
For students coming from Choate, however, the numbers are hardly as large. According to Mr. Jacoby, last year only about five members of the class of 2007 elected to take a gap year, although he acknowledged that there was no hard data on this. Mr. Jacoby said that there is talk gap years as a trend in college admissions, but that he thinks “that has a lot to do with the personalities of the individuals involved,” rather than any underlying trend. “About ten students in the class of 2008 are seriously considering taking a gap year,” Mr. Jacoby said.
For the class of 2008, the idea of taking a gap year is imbued with the pursuit of new and established interests, from working on a polo farm for Lauren Finkelstein ’08, to chasing a “pipe dream” of becoming a baker for Rachel Kauder-Nalebuff ’08. Kauder-Nalebuff provided perhaps the most compelling reason for taking a year off: “I’m genuinely trying to think of a reason to go to college next year and I can’t,” she explained. Instead, she will attend culinary school, work at a writer’s workshop in San Francisco, and do women’s health work in India. “I’ve had a pipe dream of becoming a baker for a while now, and I finally have the chance to do something about it. I’m not just going to let this opportunity slide…and I know that the longer I put all these things off, the harder it will get.”
