Senior feels gap year will help her “experience the real world”

Tessa+Milligan+shown+here+backpacking+abroad

Tessa Milligan shown here backpacking abroad

Camilla Ibarra-Gallego, Staff Writer

College, college, college. It’s that time of year that seniors are sending out college applications and are getting back acceptance letters. For many of them, going away to college after graduation is the only thing on their mind, but there is an alternative: Gap Year. A gap year is a period, typically an academic year, taken by students as a break from academic studies. Even though it is a break from all schoolwork “gap year is not a year off. It’s a year on,” said Mr. Dave Silva, one of our college counselors at Cathedral Catholic.

Gap years have many benefits for students and can help you answer questions about yourself such as, “Who am I?” and “What am I interested in?” Gap years can offer many opportunities whether you’re seeking to travel, participate in internships, or partake in job opportunities abroad. Many organizations that offer gap year or gap semester do so while you are still getting college credit.

A study conducted by the Dean of Admissions of Middlebury College, Robert Clagett, shows that students who had taken a year off have consistently higher GPAs than those who didn’t. His research also shows that “gappers” perform better in school than their peers.

One of our fellow students, Senior Tessa Milligan, is taking the opportunity to go overseas and enjoy a gap year abroad to do what she loves best: exploring the world. Even though “nothing’s set in stone yet,” Tessa is currently joining different gap year organizations that will bring her to various parts of the world where she will embrace several volunteering opportunities.

Her plans for the future lie in Marine Biology, so during her gap year she is planning on going to Seychelles, an island off the African coast. There, she hopes to practice and learn about marine life and the conservation of it. Tessa also wants to embark on some adventurous trips such as “backpacking Mount Kilimanjaro with her older sister, studying ecology in Tasmania, and becoming a certified yoga teacher in India or Bali,” she said.

Tessa truly believes that a gap year is “a really good idea because you’re so worn out after high school that you lose sight of why you want to learn in the first place, and taking a year off will help me decide what I want to do for the rest of my life,” she said.

During gap years, you can meet a multitude of international individuals and create life-long friendships. Gap years give you an opportunity to grow, to experience, to learn, and to become an independent and self-knowing person. And as Tessa Milligan said, gap year will inevitably help you to “experience the real world.”