The train of American education boards students at preschool and stops every nine months when summer rolls around to allow passengers to stretch their legs and explore the scenery, in hopes they will find an academic track to continue navigating before reaching the final destination of college graduation.
Some students can find clarity in their studies and travel straight to college after the high school graduation stop. But others, such as University of Wisconsin-Madison sophomore Erica Anderson, find it beneficial to “interrupt the cycle” when developing an academic focus and jump-starting an understanding of the world outside the classroom.
Anderson decided to take a gap year when she realized she did not want to rush right into another four years of school. Instead, she wanted to immerse herself in another culture and become more globally aware through a program called Global Citizen Year.
Anderson, who spoke French before departing, spent one academic year in Senegal with a host family where she learned Wolof– one of the many unofficial national languages– and worked in an orchard and at a primary school.
Anderson said her experiences abroad shaped her academics and said she “naturally settled into this intersection between agriculture and social justice.” She is now pursuing a degree in Community and Environmental Sociology at UW-Madison.
Similarly, fellow UW-Madison sophomore Kendra Burpee opted for an experience abroad after completing high school. Through a program called Youth Exchange and Study, Burpee went to Gaziantep, Turkey on a full scholarship and completed the equivalent of a fifth year of high school, in Turkish.
Both Anderson and Burpee said they had fulfilling and inspiring gap year experiences that ultimately called them back to the United States to pursue college degrees, which is consistent with 90 percent of gap year students, according to the American Gap Association.
Burpee’s parents, however, were concerned her gap year might inspire her to continue traveling rather than head to college. Burpee proved them wrong.
“When I was traveling, I realized that I wanted to learn more about these things that I was seeing,” she said. “It makes my classes a lot more inspiring.”
Burpee, who also spent last summer in Turkey to improve her fluency in the language, plans to study at a Turkish university next year and is majoring in Languages and Cultures of Asia in addition to pursuing certificates in Middle Eastern Studies and Women’s Studies. She will graduate from UW-Madison a year earlier than expected, due to the retro credits she earned in Turkey.
UW-Madison freshman Wilder Deitz took a different route than Burpee and Anderson, and decided to spend his gap year in his hometown of Madison to work various teaching jobs. Similarly to Burpee and Anderson, though, his experiences working with students and educators ultimately influenced his intended social work major at the university.
After graduating early from high school in January of his senior year, Deitz began volunteering at the Rainbow Project, an organization that provides services to children and families with traumatic or abusive pasts. He also tutored at local middle schools and high schools in addition to working several jobs in the food service industry. Meanwhile, Deitz applied to colleges in the Madison area, hoping to spend his first year of college at UW-Madison.
Deitz was not accepted to UW-Madison the first time he applied and decided the real-world experience he would receive from continuing to volunteer and tutor would make it more difficult for the university to reject him a second time. So he moved into a house on the east side of Madison and began working 30 to 40 hours per week to revamp his resume and learn to live on his own for another year before applying again.
“I really wanted to have an adult life,” Deitz said. Although he was already more independent than many others his age, Deitz realized he was limited by not having a college degree in the professional world.
Comparing his jobs in the food service industry to those in the fields of education and social work helped him realize that a higher education would be necessary for what he wanted to pursue professionally. Working in food service, Deitz added, was not very fulfilling.
“It wasn’t what I really wanted to do with my life and that wasn’t the social scene I wanted to remain in through my young adult life,” Deitz said. On top of that, he realized he would need to graduate from college in order to progress in the education field.
“All of my superiors in the school district divisions had degrees,” he said.
He completed his application to UW-Madison for the second time and is now a freshman at the university.
While Deitz, Burpee and Anderson had only positive things to say about their gap years, a survey conducted by the Higher Education Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles, showed that of 300,000 first-time college students entering a four-year university, only 1.2 percent took a year off before entering college. Although the AGA said this number is steadily rising, Burpee said one possible explanation is that more students do not take this opportunity is because many do not know it is an option.
Though “higher education is definitely acknowledging the trend,” Anderson said the overwhelming approach is to continue right on to college after high school and just “get it done.”
Deitz agreed and said percieved competition among peers on social media might influence students to follow the standard education model.
“People present themselves on Facebook as being as successful as they can make themselves look,” Deitz said, which then creates a “competitive air” and pressure to follow what everyone else is doing.
Anderson, Burpee and Deitz all felt taking a gap year instead enhanced their undergraduate educations.
Additionally, Susan Nelson, a pre-health advisor at UW-Madison, said detouring from the traditional American education track can have similar benefits for undergraduates with graduate school aspirations.
“That time only strengthens your application,” Nelson said.
She and four other advisors help students throughout the process of applying to programs in various health professions. Admissions committees, according to Nelson, are looking for diversity in applicants. If taking a gap year and gaining work experience helps a student become more diverse, then she and the other pre-health advisors encourage students to do so.
Seeking diverse surroundings to differentiate oneself in the increasingly competitive academic pool may be what it takes to find the right path, according to Anderson.
Breaking away from the conventional American education model might give students the ability “to step back or realize that there are many diverse ways of thinking and living in the world,” Anderson said. There are unlimited ways to do so, she added.
According to Anderson, further integration of the gap year into the American education culture will require increasing focus on experiential learning and broadening the accepted ways students can spend their time if they choose to break from the traditional route.
