The 5 Lessons My Gap Year Taught Me
Thinking about taking a year off after college? Great! Here’s a taste of what you’ll learn.
Life has a very special rhythm to it. You attend school for a couple of years, decide what you want to do with the rest of your life, get married, have kids, work until you can’t anymore, and then die (sure, not everyone’s experience will have this direction, but you get the idea). I always thought I was ready to enter the flow millions live in every day. Heck, I was even excited. To graduate college and start working on what I wanted until my body was tired from it, but life had different plans for me.
You see, I never saw myself as one of those people who thought needed to take a year off before they started to live in the real world. I believed I knew who I was, what I wanted, and what I was capable of achieving. But when you’re a planner, and when things don’t go according to plan, pressing the pause button in your life suddenly seems like a good idea.
And so, I did.
In the summer of 2018, I decided to pack everything I could in a 50-pound bag, a small carry-on, and a backpack to head on a journey abroad before I had to keep moving with the natural rhythm of life.
Everyone will tell you how much you’ll grow and how much you’ll learn, and to no one’s surprise, you will. The number of things you will discover about yourself, others, and the world will be so different from the things you’ll learn in college or through a professional job.
So, without further ado, here are the five things I learned from my gap year abroad:
1. Some Things Don’t Go According to Plan
As I explained before, a gap year was not something I intended to take. The mere decision to take a year off was not on the meticulously planned life I had thought for myself. But as I learned, there are things in life you can’t change, and sometimes you just have to roll with the punches.
You can try to plan everything to the last detail, but the reality is, you never actually know what will happen. Canceled flights, accidents, misunderstandings can happen no matter how much you want to avoid them. The only thing in your control, the way you deal with said instances.
I know, I know, you’ve heard that your whole life. But guess what? It’s true! And I never learned how to roll with the punches until I was living alone in a foreign country.
There are certain things you will not learn inside a classroom, and this is one of them. Taking a year off from the professional life you planned for yourself allows you to look at these little accidents as opportunities. Why?
Because most times, the consequences from these unplanned instances tend to not have a repercussion in your professional life. They just count as life experiences! And yes, as your grandma says, those are the ones that help grow.
2. Things Won’t Happen Unless You Make Them Happen
Unfortunately, nothing in life is free. Nothing. So when you want something, call it a job, an apartment, a higher income, or whatever you please, no one will hand it to you. You have to work for it.
The same thing happens when you’re out there exploring the world. No one will hand you the perfect road trip or the ideal way to earn money while you’re taking a year off, you have to explore your options and do what you must to achieve the results you want. And if you’re on a tight budget, the amount of work you have to put in will be twice as hard.
Friendships are another thing most of took for granted. While we’re at school, it is so easy to meet people from your classes or a party. The real world is much different and scarier than that. You have to put yourself out there, really out there. You’ll find yourself texting strangers online and saying yes to plenty of plans you would not have agreed to in the past just for the opportunity to meet and connect with others.
That’s why you will find that the friends you make and the places you visit will become incredibly special to you because you dared to get out there and find them.
3. Solving Problems Is Much Harder but More Rewarding When You’re on Your Own
As I’ve said before, problems show up out of nowhere. And I am no stranger to that. Long story short, I got into an accident that ended with me in the Emergency Room and a four thousand dollar medical bill. Fortunately enough, I had insurance. The problem arose when said insurance decided that they would not cover the cost of my time at the ER.
Medical bills and claims are a pain. And when there is no one, and I mean no one, to help you solve something you don’t understand, it can be quite scary. I won’t lie to you; it wasn’t easy to solve these kinds of problems, especially when the language from the country you’re in is not your first. It took me the entire gap year to make my insurance pay on its entirety my ER visit. It wasn’t easy, it took a lot of good nights of sleep from me, but in the end, I did it. I came out triumphant from the most horrible insurance nightmare I had ever experienced.
But independent problem solving is a lesson you need to learn if you want to be successful in life. There will be times where events you did not plan for will happen, and you will have to learn to deal with them. But when these problems arise in your professional or personal life, and you already know how to act when they occur, you will find that taking the rails of your life is not that hard after all.
4. You Don’t Need Anyone Else
Being alone is scary. But want to know something even more terrifying? Doing things on your own. It may sound ridiculous, but it’s true. Whether that is attending a concert or having a fancy meal in a restaurant without anyone else. Most people will opt out of plans just because they don’t want to do them on their own.
During your year off, doing things by yourself will become the new normal. There is no way around it because unless you are already traveling with someone else, chances are you will have to figure out everything on your own. At first, these activities will be daunting. But as you get used to it, they actually become quite fun. You have to wait for no one or ask for anyone’s opinion; you can do things as you please.
Seeking approval or a companion to experience life with come naturally to us. However, learning to be comfortable with yourself in the outside world is essential when it comes to self-love and acceptance. When you know that all you need is your happiness, you will learn that the addition of a partner or someone else in your life is that, addition and not a necessity.
5. You Will Change, and That’s Alright
How many times have we seen on movies or TV shows the phrase “You’ve changed” when wanting to dramatize an interaction between two characters. But changing isn’t wrong! Quite the contrary, it is essential when wanting to evolve in this fast-paced world.
You will notice that others won’t change in the year you took, and that’s ok. Everyone gets to evolve at their own pace and rhythm, but when you move abroad and you spend time discovering yourself, the speed at which you will change will most likely be faster.
Because of the amount of time you spent on your own, learning to love this newer and more mature version of yourself will not be complicated. You will learn how to appreciate things you didn’t in the past and how to ignore others that seemed important at the time. Your priorities will change; your likes and dislikes, as well as bits from your personality. In the end, you will notice that the changes this year had in your life contributed enormously to the person you will become.
After the gap year passes by (and believe it will be quicker than you think), you will arrive at your regular life with life lessons you could not have gotten anywhere else. You will have become a more independent and mature person as a result of the many life experiences you got to live.
The people you met, the places you saw, and even the food you ate will all help you navigate your professional and personal life uniquely. After all, we are all a product of the things we got to live and experience. Because yes, a gap year will have a substantial influence on us.
So, if you’re wondering whether if taking a gap year is worth it or not, all I can tell you is, I would probably not be the person I am today if I had not taken that unplanned but a wonderful year off.
