You may hesitate about taking a gap year, worrying that you may lose your mental alertness and adversely affect your studies when you do finally get to university or college. But this doesn’t have to happen. It’s possible for you to study during your time off, not in the concentrated way you did in high school, but taking courses or having learning experiences that concentrate solely on your own interests and desires.

There are multitudes of possibilities, some of them involving volunteer programs in which to participate. For example, if you’re interested in working with animals, then you could spend a few months at a koala sanctuary in Brisbane, Australia. Then you might fly over to Thailand to help with an aid organization. Or perhaps you’d prefer to enroll in a short art and design program in Ghana, or further your art studies in Italy. Many of the gap year websites like www.gapyear.com have links to programs like these. Some also include discussion forums where people post information about these opportunities while others share tips and information from experiences they’ve already gained from their own gap year travel and work.

If you know what sort of study or volunteer program you want to get into, then you can do some research to discover what’s available. Above all, check to see if you will need any particular qualifications to be accepted into a program. For example, if you need to learn certain skills before working in an animal rescue organization, then you’ll want to find out in time to acquire them. You should also check the discussion forums on sites like www.gapyear.com or www.gapyearworldwide.com to learn about the various organizations from others who have worked with some of these groups.

You may decide to study the Mandarin language in China, take art courses in Italy, or volunteer in Africa. With the wide range of educational opportunities that are open to you during your gap year, you don’t have to worry that you’re going to lose your mental edge. While you are learning things that feed your soul and engage your greatest interests, you will be keeping your mind active, so that you can return to your regular studies without having lost a single step.

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Students who don’t want to head straight to university or college after graduation, but would like to take a year or two off instead, might consider working abroad for that time period. This is the perfect opportunity for them to take a breather after all their years of school, but still have the chance to gain some experience and maturity, and see a little of the wider world. Doing some gap year work might be just the opportunity they’re looking for before hitting the books again.

Some might take a complete leap of faith, planning to live mostly by their wits, taking odd jobs as they backpack around Europe and calling this “working abroad.” Others might not want to be quite that adventurous, but instead work with organizations that have been established explicitly to help such students find these year-long jobs in other countries. Web sites like www.gapwork.com or www.gapyearabroad.ca, among many others, are useful not just for their job postings, but also for their advice on health and safety issues when on these traveling experiences, and how to find insurance.

The types of available jobs are surprisingly varied. Many, not unexpectedly, involve teaching English as a second language. But in Australia, for example, the Oyster organization offers a full year of work in fields like hospitality or farming in the Outback. Global Choices has young people working abroad in things like marketing and communications, hospitality jobs in Greece, and farm work, childcare, and even archeological work in the UK. The Transitions Abroad organization helps American students find international jobs, and the Student Work Abroad Program (SWAP) arranges gap year work for Canadians.

A gap year job may be just what some of these young people need to prepare for the future as responsible global citizens. As well as gaining valuable experience working abroad that’s bound to look great on their resumes and make them more employable, but they’ll have learned what it is like to work with people in other cultures and to see the world from a different perspective. By leaving home and doing this work, they may return from their travels more mature and ready to take up their future responsibilities.

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If a student wants to take a gap year, he or she can rest easy that they can go in several directions to find something that will fit their own preferences. Many ivory tower schools now accept the concept of the gap year, while others even promote it. And in fact, some colleges and universities promote it so actively that they have set up programs for their own for students to participate in, before getting busy with their main studies.

Universities that either accept or even encourage taking a gap year are multiplying in the United States. Harvard University might even be called an old hand at this, since for 35 years they’re been sending acceptance letters to applicants suggesting that they might want to defer for a year, to give themselves a breather after high school. And Yale, another grizzled veteran of the gap year, has always allowed a student to take the extra year. It just doesn’t actively suggest it the way Harvard does.

Franklin & Marshall College of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, outdo Harvard and Yale one better, though. Reasoning that a student really needs a few months to transition out of the high school mentality and into the more adult world of college, this school started a “January Program” that allows these young people to defer starting their first semester courses. Instead, they can choose to participate in school-sponsored programs, like a course of study in Italy, or learning mountaineering. Princeton University is another of the schools with the same idea, using its “Bridge Program” to allow students to engage in community service work in other countries for a year.

Even at the high school level, the gap year concept is being promoted. For example, the Los Angeles college preparatory school, Harvard-Westlake, has hosted “gap year fairs,” where representatives from various programs present the available opportunities to students. Other public learning institutes are beginning to follow suit.

The choices available to the gap year student are myriad. If they want to stay home and simply work for a year, they can do that. If they’d prefer to be more adventurous, donning their backpack and engaging in a little travel, then that is also an option. But if they want to stay in touch with their college or university, doing something different but with a bit of supervision, then they’ll be glad of the fact that many of these schools will actually sponsor and help plan their gap year work initiative.

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When you hear people talk about the gap year, which is the growing practice of students taking a year off between high school and their next stage of education, the general attitude now tends to be positive. Universities themselves are starting to recognize the practice as potentially valuable, and allowing young people the time off, even if they’ve been accepted into a program already. But even so, students ought to think carefully, especially about whether this break will positively or negatively affect their future career opportunities.

One of the things that could raise eyebrows is the fact that the graduate will have gaps in their resume as well as in their stream of education. Or they may want to go to a school that would require them to apply all over again if they skip the year for which they’ve been accepted. Later attendance in their chosen program may not always be automatic if they change plans after this acceptance. These alterations could affect the direction their career plans will take, if they end up having to choose a different school, or even risk not being accepted a second time into the same school. And some people simply regard the gap year as a “lost” year, no matter what experiences the young people gain.

These may prove to be unwarranted fears, however. More than a few ivory towers of education already take the gap year into account when admitting students. And when employers look over young people’s resumes, they are usually much more interested in how they’re qualified to do the job, than in whether they took a break before acquiring their degree. In fact, if the person’s qualifications are good, having that extra breadth of experience may increase their career possibilities.

In this regard, the year off may prove more of a benefit than a detriment, particularly if the gap year jobs are related to the students’ area of study. Having some actual experience in the field can only add value to their academic credentials, and make their skills more marketable instead of less. Indeed, they may find their career prospects actually enhanced. So as a student contemplates taking this extra year before going on to higher education, he or she should take careful thought, not just for how this time will enrich their life right now, but also for how it might improve it for the long term.

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In the last decade or two, a phenomenon called the “gap year” has been growing in popularity, particularly in the most developed regions of the world. What this refers to is the practice of taking a year off, usually after high school, to give oneself a mental break before plunging into the world of higher education. But it isn’t just a year of goofing off; rather, this time provides a chance to learn more about the global society and gain either work or volunteer experience.

There are many reasons why a young learner might want to take a year or two off in this way. The first, of course, is simply to have a chance to grow up. The young person is about to enter an educational world where they’ll be expected to stand on their own two feet a lot more than they’ve done before, and now’s the chance to do just that. When traveling they’ll be exposed to other cultures and other ways of doing things, and this might alter the type of studies they engage in after they finish the gap year and get back to school.

So prevalent has this practice become that entire organizations have sprung up to help facilitate choices that will most benefit him or her. Everyone from travel agencies to governments seem to have set up similar opportunities. Some countries have arranged exchange programs, and while these may not always have been designed explicitly for gap year work or travel, many who take this year off take advantage of these programs. Australia has the most extensive arrangements, having created working holiday exchanges with countries like Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Norway, Taiwan, and many others. This year can be a youth travel experience that shapes what the young person does for the rest of their life.

Not every culture encourages students to take gap years, however. Denmark, for example, actively discourages the phenomenon, feeling that their society and economy require students to get into the work force more quickly. So the country pushes them toward continuing with their educational pursuits instead. Nor is the practice very common in the United States, although it is increasing slowly.

But the gap year can be invaluable for both those who participate and even for the colleges and universities they attend when they get back home. Young people with some extra maturity make more responsible students, and often have a better idea of the direction they are taking with their lives. They’ve often spent a year doing something quite good for the world, and their lives in the future can only be the richer for having taken this extra time.

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