What do you plan to do on your gap year? Maybe you intend to spend the winter doing a ski season, working in the mornings then having fun on the slopes in the afternoons. Perhaps you’d like to see the world by teaching English in China, India or South East Asia. Or maybe you’d like to get involved with some kind of voluntary initiative, whether it’s helping to care for disadvantaged youngsters or protecting endangered animals.
Gap years are very common nowadays as a kind of natural bridge between school and university. They allow students to take a breather after months of study and exam pressure, develop new skills, find independence and personal growth, and gain experience that will make them look more attractive to prospective employers in the future.
But it’s not always easy. If you make your arrangements too late, or you don’t research your options properly, you risk wasting your time off, which won’t do you any favours. When it came time for me to plan my gap year, I spent at least two weeks considering what sort of thing I was most interested in doing, what my budget was, and where I wanted to go. In the end, I spent six months travelling around South East Asia, where I could easily rent a decent room for $20 a night, working on various voluntary projects for anywhere between a few days and a week at a time. One of the most rewarding periods was spent on a community-owned farm in Laos, where I helped to build a guesthouse from locally-sourced materials.
By travelling for six months only, it left me with plenty of time to save up a pot of money, and also to return a couple of weeks before I headed to my university digs to say goodbyes and brush up on my notes.
Here’s some good tips on how to ensure you derive the maximum benefit from your own gap year:
Firm itinerary or freewheelin’?
While it can be reassuring to have a set framework in place for your trip – “I will arrive here by this date, and stay for X weeks before going on to this place”, and it helps with budgeting, that does take away a lot of spontaneity. What might work best is just to buy yourself a ticket to wherever you want to go, and then see how things work out once you’re there. You may find that spending eight weeks on the beach isn’t so attractive as it first seemed when you planned it in rainy Britain.
Guidebooks are golddust
A good guidebook is indispensable – not only does it give you reliable advice on where to eat, sleep and visit in a destination, but it will contain plenty of other useful titbits of information on the culture, environments and traditions of the place you’re visiting. However, if you’re planning to roam around a lot, perhaps interrailing in Europe or travelling through South East Asia, then you will discover that carrying around a whole stack of books isn’t practical. It makes sense then to invest in a cheap e-reader or tablet so you can download as many as you want, and if you do unfortunately lose it, it doesn’t cost much to replace.
Party less, experience more
Gap years are of course a great time to let your hair down a bit. You’ll meet lots of likeminded travellers on the road, and in some destinations the temptation can be to go out partying all the time. But if you’re out all night most of the week, you’ll run out of money quickly, and you will probably only get a very superficial view of the amazing places you’re visiting. So try and keep the partying to a minimum so you can stay on the road for longer, and get a greater insight into the local culture.
Manage your money
Effective budgeting will not only help you in making the most of your gap year, it will also stand you in good stead for when you get to higher education, stretching out your loan for as long as possible. Before departure, decide how much you can afford to spend every week on accommodation, transport and food, which are your basic essentials. After they’re taken care of, you know what you can afford to spend on having fun, be it visiting museums or galleries, taking cookery courses, or just, you know, drinking lots of beer. Vital to remember also is not to be carrying too much cash around with you. Spend a day before you leave managing your finances, what money is going out of your account on a regular basis such as for loan repayments or phone bills, so you don’t end up stranded somewhere having to call home for a temporary cash injection.
Know your goals
As I mentioned right at the start of this piece, a well-thought out gap year can give you many benefits. When I started to plan my gap year, I drew up a simple chart listing the things I wanted to get out of my time away – number one, meet new people; number two, eat lots of amazing food (I am a big foodie); number three, experience a culture as different from my own as possible. Southeast Asia fit the bill – thousands of young people travel there every year and the locals are, for the most part, really friendly, so I was sure I’d meet people easily; I love spicy Asian food, and the culture was fascinating. But you may have other aims – perhaps you want to learn a new language, learn to sail or ski, or want to help others. Your goals should be clear at the start of your trip, and you should keep the focus on them throughout to have a successful gap year.
Here’s hoping you have an amazing time away on your gap year, and remember if it doesn’t work out for whatever reason, you can always try again after university!