“This was the transformation I’d been seeking:” Gap Years & Mental Health
By Emily Cheng
After my first year of college, I decided to take a gap year. It was a decision my mental and physical health demanded, and I’m glad I took an unconventional route.
Throughout high school, I thought my life was about to start once I entered college. I thought I would grow into myself, gain the confidence I never had, explore unknown passions, and find my people. See, high school is four years of obsessing over SAT scores, AP exams, your rank and GPA, your friend’s rank and GPA, and whether your extracurricular activities would make you look interesting to a college. Four years of pressure, over-achieving, and toxic productivity. You never really get a chance to sit back and wonder, is this what I should be doing? Am I doing what makes me happy? The existential crisis and the depression that followed were inevitable.
When that stress and obsession paid off and I got accepted into a prestigious, liberal arts college in Boston, I was elated. It felt like the pinnacle of my life, the only purpose I’d really had. I waited for the transformation that I’d so desperately longed for. I wanted life to be different. However, shortly into my freshman year of college, I soon realized that I’d just traded one sheltered environment for another, and that the pressure had merely transferred from SATs and APs to internships, connections, and careers.
At college, it seemed like I always had to be “on”- always studying, always smiling, always productive. After all, this was a $70k per year school, and to veer off this constant path would be to throw away thousands of dollars. There was pressure to do it all. Between classes, work, student groups, volunteering, and exercise, my mental health was slipping. I felt numb and spaced out all the time, never feeling truly present and in the moment. Some days the world didn’t seem real; other days there was a heavy weight on me.
Taking a gap year did wonders for my mental health. It gave me a sense of clarity and calm towards the future. Being a student is hard. Sometimes you need to do more than treat yourself and instead, give yourself a change in scenery. For me, getting off campus and into a new city gave me the space the zoom out and see the world from a different perspective.
Throughout my gap year, I completed two internships, one in the fall at a social impact nonprofit and one in the spring at a climate change organization. In this respect, it was very productive and valuable. But what’s more memorable to me is what I did beyond this resume level. I learned what it’s actually like to work at a nonprofit, I ran a marathon, I made new friends and met fascinating people, I tasted more espresso than I can count, and I took up biking. Things felt real.
My gap year gave me more than a sense of independence, it gave me a dose of reality. College can feel like a bubble, both physically and socially, and it’s easy to get trapped under it. It’s normal to feel depressed and feel like nothing will change. Getting out of this bubble and into a world where people aren’t stressed every second, have free time to pursue their passions and connect with friends, and don’t have to be fully charged was freeing.
More importantly, taking a gap year gave me the space to develop my own personality, priorities, and identity without the influence of groupthink and social conformity you find in schools. People are impressionable to the communities and groups that surround them, and you either grow towards or in rejection of those groups. It’s difficult to find your independence when there’s so much pressure to do the same as everyone else.
Taking a gap year also meant taking a year off from paying a $50k tuition fee. Tuition and finances was one of the biggest factors in my mental health. It was a relief to not have to quantify experiences and time into money and worry if I was a waste or a disappointment. Interning at nonprofits calmed a lot of my anxieties over future career prospects and made me realize I didn’t have to attend an elite college and I’d still be okay in the future.
There’s no prescription on how to have a fulfilling gap year. You don’t need to travel across the ocean for new perspectives, but don’t just sit at home. Get out of your comfort zone, seek new opportunities and adventures, and enjoy the change. You can work, you can find a volunteer program, you can move to a different city. Be unconventional.
Sometimes I hesitate to call this past year a “gap year” since commonly it’s a year between high school and college to travel, volunteer abroad, and go on adventures. Yet “leave of absence” or “year off” sound so sterile, so devoid of purpose, the opposite of my experience.
This year was the transformation I’d been seeking. I genuinely feel like a new person. Happier. Wiser. Realer. I don’t know how my mental health situation will unfold when I transfer this fall to a new school and have to be a full time student, but for once I feel like I have some sort of control. The existential crisis is subdued- for now.
