The Case For Taking A Gap Year

Academic burnout is a growing issue for students across the U.S. Far from being “the best years of our lives,” most will recount that high school was like living on a conveyor belt of SAT tests, extracurriculars, and self-doubts while under extreme pressure to rack up achievements that might help you to stand out from the crowd.

- Ethan Knight

Students graduate with a sigh of relief, hopefully anticipating a future full of opportunities, only to be body-slammed by another four years of even more intense academic pressure. Some students roll with the punches and learn to juggle essays and schedules and “adulting,” but a growing number are being left behind. Anxiety, depression, and even suicide rates skyrocket for US and Canadian teens in their first year of university (www. macleans.ca/education/uniandcollege/the-mental-health-crisis-oncampus/). Launching from a high-pressure high school directly into higher-pressure university is proving increasingly difficult for some young people to handle successfully.

But of course, how could a young person ever hope to be successful at life and academia when they haven’t taken the time to decide what ‘success’ looks like to them? Absent self-awareness to inform their choices and life-experience to demonstrate their own particular genius, perhaps the answer to this growing crisis is simple: take some time off, already! Who says that education can’t continue outside of a classroom? Do we really need to immediately follow up the four-years and four-walls of high school with four more years of university? The statistics suggest that we shouldn’t. At our current rate, 53% of university students still have not completed their Bachelors Degree within six years, meaning there’s work to be done. (www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/upshot/why-college students-drop-out-follow-the-dollars.html) As a way of combating this issue, many universities are beginning to encourage their applicants to take a Gap Year before arrival, citing the many academic and personal benefits that Gap Year alumni possess when entering academia.