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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Why are growing numbers of students deciding to take a gap year between high school and university or college? It’s a question that puzzles many people. Is it laziness or irresponsibility that prompts them to do this? If they’ve worked hard all through public school, to guarantee admittance at a good university, then what sort of reasons might they have for wanting to defer their education for a year?

The answers, of course, are as varied as the young learners themselves. But one answer is that they are often simply burned out. For twelve long years of public school, their entire childhood, in fact, they and their mothers and fathers have probably been focused on them getting good grades and being accepted at an excellent school. But Jim Bock, Dean of Admissions at Swarthmore College, said in 2008 that he thinks this single-minded focus on creating the right image and grades, even during the summers between terms, is part of what has led to student burn out and the popularity of the gap year. As Bock put it, “Summers have disappeared completely…so I actually think the gap year may be the new summer.”

It might be this very drive to see the students succeed – indeed, the insistence that they do so in this very prescribed educational manner – that has created the urge to delay their further education. Some of these young people are overwhelmed by “helicopter parents” who constantly hover and micromanage their lives. And others are simply worn out from the very adult campaign they’ve been waging all their young lives, to “succeed in life” and get into one of the better universities or colleges.

Whatever the case, many elite schools have now recognized that burn out among students is a serious problem. For example, Harvard actually recommends to its accepted applicants, right in the acceptance letter, that they consider deferring their attendance for a year so they can start refreshed when they do arrive at school. Yale happily allows its own successful applicants to take a year off. And Princeton has even started a “Bridge Year” program to send freshmen out on service trips.

Human nature being what it is, there is no doubt that the motivation to take a year off for some students is just laziness and the desire to goof around. Yet even among those, the underlying reason might be the same burn out and the need to refresh for a time. And many others simply want the chance to be independent and learn to make their own decisions, possibly for the first time in their lives. After their gap year jobs or travel experiences, a large percentage return home to start on their degree, having grown into mature, responsible adults.

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