Recharge

Jezrel Sabaduquia was stuck.

It was 2014 during his senior year of high school, and he had been rejected from Babson College. He had applied for a full scholarship and had made it to the final round before he was cut.

“I was so devastated, because I was literally putting all my eggs in one basket,” Sabaduquia said.

He needed time to figure out what he was going to do, so Sabaduquia decided to take a gap year.

Sabaduquia began a whirlwind year of travel, visiting 11 countries and crisscrossing the globe. He toured Asia with his parents. He interned and stayed with a host family in Brazil. He visited his dream city of Copenhagen, Denmark, and enjoyed it so much that he is planning to return there to study abroad.

When he arrived at Syracuse University in the fall of 2015, he was mature, refreshed and eager to begin his education.

Ally Moreo | Asst. Photo Editor

Gap years — which once were thought of as accessible only for the well-to-do or for those who weren’t actually intending to go to college — are becoming a more common option for American students as statistics prove that taking a break before college has benefits, in college and beyond.

Ethan Knight, executive director of the American Gap Association, said each year about 30,000 or 40,000 students take a gap year. The three most common reasons, according to Knight, that students take gap years are burnout from the competitive pressures to get into college, a wanderlust feeling to travel the world and a yearning to discover more about themselves.

And gap years could pay off in the long run as well.

Although Knight said the national average of people who are dissatisfied with their job is 56 percent, 86 percent of people who took gap years are satisfied with their careers.

“That 86 percent should be in the province of everybody,” Knight said.

There has been more media attention on gap years lately as well, with the White House announcing in May that Malia Obama would take a gap year before attending Harvard University in fall 2017. Alia Pialtos, director of USA Gap Year Fairs, said interest traffic on the organization’s website increased 400 percent the day of the announcement.

SU offered its own gap year program until this academic year, said Sarah Scalese, associate vice president of the division of public affairs. The program listed was for international students to take up to three courses in London or Madrid, and experience “American university culture and coursework,” according to SU’s admissions website in September. The program is no longer listed on the website.

Although SU’s gap year program is no longer intact, the university offers Discovery Programs, which allow first-year students to study abroad their first semester at SU, said Maurice Harris, dean of undergraduate admissions, in an email.

Knight said the pressure for students to immediately go to a four-year college right after high school is fading away. Despite societal norms that say students should go straight to college from high school, he said 90 percent of students who take gap years are back in school within a year.

Additionally, families and students are realizing that it can actually be more cost effective to take a gap year, Pialtos said. She added that investing in a gap year can help students find out what they want to do and be more mindful of their choices.

“I don’t know many people who have gotten a four-year degree in four years,” Pialtos said. “Taking a gap year is really an investment and can set the tone for individuals and navigate the rest of their career path.”

Sabaduquia, who is now a sophomore information management and technology major, applied to SU while he was abroad in Brazil. His parents had praised the school, and when he finally came to visit, even the rainy and snowy weather couldn’t deter him.

Yet the transition back to school wasn’t perfect. After traveling the world, it was hard to be stuck in one place for a long period of time, he said. Sabaduquia said the age and mentality difference between him and other freshmen made him take part in activities he wasn’t comfortable with to feel accepted. His first semester at SU was exhausting and socially challenging.

But after moving to a different residence hall, Sabaduquia was able to refocus. He rushed Phi Sigma Pi and applied to internships. Now, he is ready to continue his growth.

“Now that I’ve traveled so much, I just want to keep traveling and traveling,” he said. “There are so many places, so many experiences yet for me to experience, that I’m just ready to go on my next adventure.”

Courtesy of Jezrel Sabaduquia

Discover

Georgia Eisenmann knew she wanted to go to Spain. After trying to plan logistics to spend a summer there, she thought, why not just take a whole year?

After applying and choosing to attend SU, Eisenmann decided to defer her application for a year, which she said was as simple as sending an email.

“Taking a gap year wasn’t really a thing,” she said. “It’s just something I realized I wanted to do.”

Ally Moreo | Asst. Photo Editor

Eisenmann spent four months in Spain, studying with other American students and living with a host mother. Then she spent another four months in Antigua, Guatemala, working on a coffee farm and living in a volunteer house.

Eisenmann, now a sophomore international relations major, said she was lucky her parents were supportive of her decision to take a gap year and travel.

Knight, the executive director of the American Gap Association, said gap years are thought of being only for the wealthy, and while he said some programs do cost thousands of dollars, others are accessible to people in any income bracket. Some programs will pay for food and housing, others give students a chance to make money and some colleges offer leadership awards for students who have taken gap years, Knight said.

Eisenmann’s gap year helped fuel her passion for travel and acquire friends all over the world, from her host mom in Salamanca, Spain to friends in Sydney, Australia and Juarez, Mexico. She now hopes to study abroad in Chile.

“I highly recommend taking a year off,” Eisenmann said. “… Once you wrap your head around the idea you don’t have to go right to college, (you realize) how much you could add to your life.”

Courtesy of Georgia Eisenmann

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Michelle Kincaid wanted to do something different — something that she was passionate about, something that would challenge her.

So she spent her gap year in Lima, Peru, where she stayed with a host family and worked as a tutor and music teacher at a local community center. She was there for nine months on a grant from Omprakash, an organization that connects volunteers and nonprofits.

It was the “most influential year of my life,” she said.

In one of her first experiences tutoring, Kincaid, now a junior international relations and citizenship and civic engagement double major, was helping a boy with math homework. Her Spanish was weak, and she was constantly flipping through a pocket dictionary to find words like “add” and “multiply.” By the time she helped the boy finish his homework, she was red in the face from concentration.

It was embarrassing to not be as prepared with the language as she would have liked, she said. She wanted to help, but needed to be aware of how much she could actually contribute, Kincaid said. It was a lesson of humility.

“You helping others is bigger than those sort of things, having to use the book is sort of silly, (but) that’s what you have to do,” she said.

Ally Moreo | Asst. Photo Editor

Kincaid said she has remained positive about her gap year experiences, even when things didn’t go perfectly. That perspective on her gap year — looking at every situation as an opportunity to learn — helped her be open to criticism and change now, Kincaid said. After her gap year, she said she had never been more motivated to return to school.

These sort of gap year experiences benefit students because they help them mature and get ready for college, said Marion Taylor, owner and founder of Taylor The Gap, a gap year consulting service, in an email.

“I think everyone should be required to work, volunteer, travel before spending $25,000 to $60,000 a year on tuition,” Taylor said in the email. “Students arrive on campus much more grounded, knowing themselves better, able to navigate social situations better, study and focus more on classwork, party less, and have a sense of interests/major.”

Students also have a greater sense of knowing what they want to do after taking a gap year, said Holly Bull, president of the Center for Interim Programs, a gap year counseling organization. Even if a student realizes they are ready for college, the process of figuring out what they want to do will have its benefits, she said.

“I think there is too much of a feeling of we are put in school, we have to go to school, ‘I ought to,’ ‘I should,’ rather than this full conscious, ‘Oh, I choose college,’” Bull said. “When you have a year to step away from this track, then you tend to take this proactive energy into college.”

People don’t take gap years to goof off, Bull said. The year is a time to learn — a journey that doesn’t have to be linear, but allows students to zigzag back and forth to discover their interests and passions.

Said Bull: “(It’s) about lighting matches, not tending fires.”

Courtesy of Michelle Kincaid

Published on October 4, 2016 at 1:43 am

Contact Haley: hykim100@syr.edu