Why are gap years trendy?

[Anonymous]

I think it is a bad idea. Too much life can get in the way of the kid ever actually going to college.

[Anonymous]

If you're going to take a gap year, you'd better get a part-time job, volunteer, take one community college class, etc.

I'm all for rest and not falling into the striver trap, but no way my kid is going to go to a beach in Thailand and party for a year on my dime.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It takes a lot of discipline to succeed in college. 12 months of taking it easy at a votunteer service job would not work for my kid !

Yup, heaven forbid they spend a year learning to live without running water, taking bucket showers and sleeping under a mosquito net, planting crops or fixing up a school, eating rice and beans for dinner, just "taking it easy" while their peers head off to college and join a fraternity and drink themselves into oblivion. Not to mention that it will be a whole extra year before they can get to Wall Street and start earning a six-figure salary. Glad I don't have a slacker who would waste a year that way.

But when kids do that, they know they have a warm bed waiting for them back home. They know they're parents will pay for a flight back home if something happens. They know they are supported.

I actually think that in some ways it gives kids a false sense of what it really is like for people who live in those areas of the world where they have no running water, and it's not just a year of roughing it; it's their lives.

It's a bizarre form of poverty tourism. There's also been a number of studies that have shown that some of those programs (where wealthy kids spend a year building things for free in poor areas of the world) actually make things worse because it would be far better to employ people living in those areas (who need employment) to do those jobs.

When I was in college, we had a couple of volunteer groups wherein kids would do those kinds of things over their summer breaks. They saw it as a kind of vacation. None of them ever came back (in my view) with a deeper understanding of poverty. If anything, they came back with a kind of self-righteous view of themselves. It was bizarre.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our DD is at elite private and she is taking a gap year whether she likes it or not. We are going to pop that little bubble she's been living in since she started private in 6th and get her a good dose of what it means to work in the real world.

Why do you sound so scornful? She was placed in this environment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our DD is at elite private and she is taking a gap year whether she likes it or not. We are going to pop that little bubble she's been living in since she started private in 6th and get her a good dose of what it means to work in the real world.

Why do you sound so scornful? She was placed in this environment.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. $60k is a lot of money to waste on an immature kids who isn't ready to take on college.

Immature 18 year old becomes studious and above it all a year later ... because why? I'm a little skeptical is all.

I agree with you somewhat, but I know that my studious kid has always been immature. Always catches on about a year after everyone else. Without fail. I'm with ya that the expensive programs for entitled teens do not achieve miracles, but if I could even put my kid in cold storage while his brain continued to mature, I would do it.

[Anonymous]

Our plan, if our son would do it, was to send him to our home country hooked up with a job through people we knew (he is only 18) and sports opportunities with our club.Not fancy, but not left to his own devices, either.

[Anonymous]

It's because your children are burned out at the ripe ol' age of 17 or 18. I worked harder and had a more grueling schedule in high school than I did at my top 10 SLAC and top 5 law school. They need a break.

[Anonymous]

There are lots of ways for kids to have a break without taking a gap year.

If they truly had a grueling/outstanding junior year, they can afford a senior year with several easy courses mixed with a couple hard courses to support their intended major.

Some/many HS have work/study programs that let kids use the easy/filler course periods to get a job/internship.

If they are up front about it in their applications, this type of gap year would allow them the benefits of an easy/explore the world year without losing any time.

The problem many encounter with a gap year is that they still don't know what they want to do when they arrive at college, despite working on that question non-stop for 15 months or more.

When you are 19 and have spent 15 months on a problem without coming up with an answer, it can feel like you never will come up with an answer AND THAT JUST PUSHING FORWARD JUST ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH.

Learning to get yourself to make progress when you aren't sure what you want is the most important thing you can learn in college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's because your children are burned out at the ripe ol' age of 17 or 18. I worked harder and had a more grueling schedule in high school than I did at my top 10 SLAC and top 5 law school. They need a break.

Isn't that what summers are for?

[Anonymous]

A snobby colleague of mine told me her daughter was taking time off before college. I said "Oh neat, a gap year."

She re, "No, a year of transition."

[Anonymous]

Geez - I wonder how we all survived without a year of "transition." (3 months was enough for me and everyone else I know who went to college).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our DD is at elite private and she is taking a gap year whether she likes it or not. We are going to pop that little bubble she's been living in since she started private in 6th and get her a good dose of what it means to work in the real world.

Why do you sound so scornful? She was placed in this environment.

+1. What a bizarre post. If your child has been living in a bubble for six years with no sense of what it means to work in the real world, that's your fault and your fault only. Don't blame the kid or the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our DD is at elite private and she is taking a gap year whether she likes it or not. We are going to pop that little bubble she's been living in since she started private in 6th and get her a good dose of what it means to work in the real world.

Why do you sound so scornful? She was placed in this environment.

+1. What a bizarre post. If your child has been living in a bubble for six years with no sense of what it means to work in the real world, that's your fault and your fault only. Don't blame the kid or the school.

It's possible the spouses were in disagreement about the private school/bubble route, and we are only hearing from one of them.

[Anonymous]

a gap year is a politically correct way for people to say then aren't going to college just yet, some will some won't we also use dot use other words that now are not politically correct for other things but now we don't