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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You may feel torn, as you contemplate what to do after high school. Should you plow straight ahead into university, or should you give yourself a mental break with a gap year? Yet if you do that, will you lose academic momentum and fall behind in your long-term goals? Rather than view the gap year as an either-or, you might consider course work that would allow you to stay in the educational stream, yet let you see some of the world too. You might take the courses, or you could even end up educating others yourself.

The most common types of programs that combine travel and academics are those that involve language study. In some of them, you would teach English as a second language (TESL). This option requires prior preparation, though, where you’d need to get some kind of certification. But if you do acquire such credentials, then there are gap year agencies that make connections with countries like China, where TESL programs are in high demand. Teaching English language courses would offer some credentials that might serve you well in your future educational pursuits.

You could also take language courses, especially if your gap year travel brings you to a country with a different language than your own. For example, the AIL Language School in Madrid, Spain, offers language and cultural courses in a program aimed explicitly toward gap year students. However, the types of course work that you can do is much broader. Some agencies work with universities that grant credits for certain intense courses of a few weeks’ duration, which concentrate on one subject. Students can fit several of these into their gap year, while allowing themselves time for travel and exploration.

Harvard University has shown the way when it comes to gap year students and their academic success rates. It not only encourages applicants to take gap years, but it actually grants admission to some based on their unusual accomplishments during those breaks. These students have a higher rate of success than those at other universities, who plowed straight into further study after high school. This should be encouraging to those who really need a mental break, but don’t want to fall behind academically. You can stay on course with their educational plans, but can see something of the world at the same time.

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