Taking a year off, whether it’s between high school and college, after college or a transition between careers, is nothing but a good idea. Yet, it’s an adventure most people hesitate on because it’s a lifestyle not necessarily idolized by our working class society. Sure, movies will tell us it’s easy – quit your job, round up your friends and head to Costa Rica. Or you’ll watch some other unrealistic drama about teens bypassing education and turning into overnight celebrities.
But let’s face reality for a moment: for the normal American teenager, we spend the first eight years of our lives in grade school, usually followed by four years of high school and then four years of college. Whether or not you go to college, you end up working at some sort of full-time job, with rent, loans and bills to pay for x amount of years. So, say you’re like me and you finished 16 years of schooling. That’s 16 years of homework; of waking up like clockwork early in the morning and cramming for tests until the late hours of the night. That’s 16 years of fluctuating with your weight, worrying about internships and working part-time jobs to save up money. It’s 16 years of trying to make new friends and yearning for a boyfriend or girlfriend. 16 years of running on an academic schedule and writing passive aggressive Facebook statues about how you’re “so done with school.” 16 years of stress, of anxiety and most of all, daydreaming about what you really want to be doing.
What exactly does it mean to “take a year off?” The reality is, it’s letting that daydream come true.
But there are two thoughts that’ll keep you awake at night when making this decision:
1) What will my friends/family think of me?
Will they think I’m lazy? Selfish? Going nowhere in my life?
2) Is it a waste of time to take a year off?
I should get a real job. I should be in a relationship. I need to focus on my career.
To answer the first one: taking a year off means taking the time to do something that you fully want to do. It’s a time where you make a solid decision about what’s best for yourself. That is not selfish because there’s nothing wrong with doing what you want to do. More importantly, stop asking yourself this question because it does not matter what anyone thinks. If you have your own money and a mind begging to take you on an adventure, go. Secondly, sure, you’ll hear about your friends and the new jobs they have. Though you’ll be happy for them, you’ll start wondering if you’re wasting your time. But you know what’s going to make you stand out in an interview – being cultural, having character, telling unique stories and proving that you can adapt to different environments and step out of your comfort zone. Travel helps you acquire all of those skills. And if you’re too afraid to admit it, I’ll say it for you: YOU DESERVE A BREAK.
So here are my 10 reasons for why you should take a year off:
1. You’ll learn more about yourself
It’s a big misconception that all people who take a year off are “finding themselves.” I spent the first half of my year off saving money and the second half backpacking through Europe. I’ve known for awhile who I am and what I want to be doing, so I wasn’t off on some great self-discovery trip. In fact, most people I met weren’t like that either. Travel can help you understand yourself better: how you interact with new people or adapt to changes. You’ll learn whether or not you get homesick and what your limit for staying in a hostel is. It’s not a matter of discovery, it’s an opportunity to understand.
2. You’ll meet like-minded people
You’ll meet people in the cities you visit, hostels/hotels you stay in or trains you travel on and you’ll quickly learn that you’re not the only one taking a year off. It’s refreshing when you meet people who share a similar perspective or opinion on travel and you’ll click with those people instantly. Some might even become life-long friends. Meeting people outside of your city/hometown/country will make you appreciate engaging with strangers – you’ll think about all those elevator rides, dining hall experiences or simple walks down the street where you were too busy to talk to anyone. But, when you travel, you’ll have this new personality trait where meeting new people comes naturally to you.
3. You’ll get a new perspective on life
It’s still not about “finding yourself” when you travel. This wraps all these points together because you’ll learn new ideas – about the world and yourself – that will help you evaluate what you deem important in life. Once you return, everything will seem weird, to put it simply. Whether you were backpacking Europe, in an AmeriCorps program or volunteering abroad, all those every day struggles you used to share on Facebook will seem so trivial. You’ll learn to see the good when everything feels like it’s falling apart. You’ll feel more confident in the directions you move in. Most importantly, people will start respecting you because your perspective will be more honest, clear and mature.
4. You’ll learn to budget
The first thing I told my father when I returned home from Europe was that is was the most expensive adventure ever. I told him I didn’t regret spending my money, but that I could not believe how expensive it was. The biggest thing I learned while traveling was how to budget my money. When you put yourself in a situation where you’re traveling and can only spend a certain amount each day, you learn to cut back on things like coffee and snacks. And you learn to live with less. You watch your bank account like a hawk, use cash as often as possible and actually take the time to think before purchasing anything.
5. You’ll have unique stories to tell
Don’t lie, this is a huge part of why you want to go on an adventure: because you want a story to tell. There’s nothing wrong with that because stories are a part of who we are. You never know who you might inspire with a brilliant story some day. Don’t you want to be that old grandma or grandpa whose always telling their grandchildren about the time they chased a heard of elk in a rainforest or got kicked out of the house they were staying at in Budapest and had to take a late-night train to Vienna!? Yep, both those things really happened.
6. You’ll go somewhere you never thought you’d go
Never in my life did I think I would be in Finland. I never thought I’d get to see Norway either – the fjords were mountains a friend had told me about and I never thought I’d actually see one. You have to go to that place you keep a calendar of in your room. You have to frolic through those lavender fields on the background of your computer. You have to just stick your finger on a map and go there because if you don’t, you’ll always be wondering what it’s like. Or someone else will go before you and you’ll have to dread looking through their Instagram feed.
7. You’ll become more cultural
By visiting new places, you will become more cultural. You’ll learn about the foods and traditions of another country. You’ll learn how different every country is – in its government, its behavior, its technology and religion. You can read about those ideas or you can live through them. And in being cultural, in being worldly, you learn to love how different people are. You’ll pick your favorite parts of each culture that will add to your new perspective and it will be so damn beautiful. You’ll be diverse and your life will feel nourished.
8. You’ll become more aware of your health
You’ll be constantly aware of your body for two reasons: 1) you’ll be afraid of getting sick because the last thing you want to do is call your parents to say you’re in a hospital overseas and 2) you’ll be tempted to eat too much. When you’re traveling, it’s easy to just eat a bunch of bad stuff and “worry about it later.” You can’t do that when you’re on the road for a long period of time. Sure, there will be moments where you live off Nutella and bread to save money, but after a few days of doing so, you’ll realize the negative impacts and learn healthier habits.
9. You’ll learn to appreciate your family
When you leave, you’ll think you have so much freedom – that it’s so great to get away from home and you’ll never go back. But, the reality is, you will get homesick. You will miss your parents, your siblings and your pets. You will yearn for the comforts of home – the home cooked meals, your bed and the safety. But you’ll share photos with your family and find little gifts along the way that remind you of them. You’ll send e-mails to update them, they’ll send e-mails to check in on you. You’ll miss them and they’ll miss you – there’s something nice when you both recognize that. You may not think so initially, but you’ll think about them constantly and wish they could see places with you. You’ll realize all that teen angst is gone, all that search for approval and outcast feelings will disappear because you’ll recognize how lucky you are to have a place to go home to. And on the inside, your family will love how wild you are because it inevitably will spark something in each of them.
10. You’ll go outside your comfort zone
The very fact that you decided to take a year off when everybody else is doing something normal makes you different. It puts you out of your comfort zone and you’ll be terrified, yet excited. You’ll be nervous, but anxious. You’ll go so far outside your comfort zone that you’ll have the ability to adapt to any situation. You’ll lose fear. You won’t be afraid to spend time alone. You’ll become independent. You’ll do things you never thought you’d do because you were comfortable in college. You were comfortable in high school and living at home. You were comfortable with the idea of following the norm and getting a job immediately after graduation. But when you take time off to travel, to be adventurous, you’re going to be so comfortably uncomfortable that you’ll forget you were ever even worried about it in the first place.
Before you know it, you’ll have a job, a house, a family of your own and you won’t be able to remember the last time you lived a great adventure. Don’t wait for that moment to catch up to you. Don’t believe other people when they tell you you’re going to fall behind if you take a year off. The best piece of advice about travel was given to me by an MTV Executive who told me: “Everyone is going to LA and competing against one another for a job, so if you have something different you want to do, do it. But come back and tell people about it – share photos, make a documentary or keep a blog. Having those stories will make you stand out. And that’s far more exciting than what everyone else is doing.”
Adventures of a Childlike Wonder 