The class of 2020 is considered to be one of the unluckiest class of all time. From not being able to spend the last couple of days on campus/school to not having farewell, delay in admission procedures, it had it all.
But as we know, everything has a silver lining. With the delay at the beginning of colleges, students of batch 2020 unintentionally got the chance to have a feel of the concept of a gap year.
In India, we unfortunately don’t have the concept of a gap year. As soon as a student finishes school, they join college. We have a defined timeline and everyone runs according to that.
What is a Gap Year?
A gap year is a year-long break that a student takes before starting college to do something different from their regular life or study. It is usually confused with a drop year where a student takes a break to “study” for the same examination which they have already attempted once.
“Gap years are not gone years, gap years are growth years”
What to do in a Gap Year?
If you wish to take a gap year, you should explore your interests. This is the main motive behind the gap year.
One of the first things that may cross someone’s mind while taking a gap year is to grab some hands-on experience with internships. Internships are a great way to get started with your career and to check whether the career that attracts you so much from the outside is actually worth it or not.
Using social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter is also a great way to stay in touch with your current and past employers, which may further lead to more opportunities in the future. This will help you to network with people around the world.
You can even attend webinars, seminars, and workshops of different kinds to get a sense of what kind of career you may want to pursue. Deciding on a college and course after all this might just be a little easier than doing it without taking a gap year.
Should you take the plunge?
In India, most of the universities allow admissions based on current year marks as well as previous year marks. Taking a gap year includes many advantages. It will make your resume stand out as it will provide you with an opportunity to learn skills that can’t be learned in a classroom.
Once you start doing internships, seminars, webinars, you will get to build a lot of meaningful connections and gain a broader perspective
The things that might make you uneasy is knowing that you are a year behind everyone who passed high school with you. It can happen that you may find your break “distracting” and might not feel like going back to college.
A gap year might also break your flow of education, making it harder for you to adjust to college if you decide to pursue education again.
Gap years are surely one of the best things to experience. It’s the need of the hour that our Indian education system adopts the same. For taking it you don’t require any specific marks, money, skills. What you require are courage and self-belief. Courage to convince your parents, the courage to experience new things and a belief that you can do it.
Let’s stop looking down on people with a gap in their resumes, for there can be multiple reasons. We, humans, deserve some time for ourselves, don’t we?
(Featured Image Source: https://www.greatschools.org/)
