Gap Year Adventures

Suggestions for Students to take a Travel Break before University

Aug 16, 2008 Philip Copple

For those who don't wish to enter university life after school the best solution is a gap year, where they can work, travel or sign up to help on a conservation project.

Ever increasing numbers of school graduates are considering gap years out of a desire to take a break from further studying. Those who feel too exhausted by their final exams to consider immediately entering another educational environment can find jobs and adventures on a gap year. The possibilities are many, including traveling and backpacking, volunteering and conservation, or just finding a job and experiencing a working life.

Entering a Working Environment

One immediate advantage of a gap year is that it can provide the person with knowledge of a different aspect of life, that of being in a working climate. Aside from the lucky few who can convince their parents to pay for their year of fun, those who take a gap year will need to spend a significant proportion of it working. Most young people at this age would have experienced at the most a part time job and so a permanent one would be a change.

As well as letting them experience a new side of life and introducing them to new people, the primary benefit of a gap year job is for money, necessary either for travelling or to help with university bills. One good area to search for gap year jobs is temporary work with a recruitment agency, as they don’t tie the backpacker down to any sort of long-term contract.

Gap Year Volunteering and Conservation Projects

Many teenagers who take a gap year wish to accomplish something more meaningful than merely traveling or exploring. Whether on home soil or further abroad, volunteering allows them to make a difference in their chosen field, and maybe to change the lives of those they help. The fact that it can’t help but improve a CV may also have a part to play in the decision for some people.

Volunteering can range from the exotic to the mundane depending on the circumstances and the applicant should put some careful research into finding the situation that fits them the best. There are a vast amount of gap year organisations dedicated to helping the volunteer to find the right placement, however many of these ask for too large a sum of money for the privilege of helping.

Whilst many volunteering projects (especially those based in more glamourous locations) can be looked down upon as little more than glorified holidays, a placement that truly helps people is a fine accomplishment indeed. The majority of more exciting volunteering placements consist of conservation projects and it is these which are more likely to be condemned.

Whilst saving trees, plant life and animals is an important task, too often these are just excuses to lie on a beach or travel to a more clement climate. Travel itself is not something to be sneered at; it is traveling under the guise of helping that infuriates true, selfless, volunteers.

Traveling and Backpacking

The vast majority of teenagers who choose to take gap years do so out of the desire for travel. Dreams of foreign cultures, pristine beaches and exciting jungles justify the hours spent in low paying menial jobs. The most popular form of traveling for gap year takers is backpacking as it provides more of a sense of adventure than merely flying in between hotel rooms dragging a suitcase. Instead, the backpacker returns home tanned, fitter, dirtier and with a host of stories to tell. Whilst care must be taken with backpacking, especially if alone, it can be an exciting and unforgettable time of the traveler’s life.

Reasons for taking gap years vary but are mainly due to these three desires: Money, Volunteering, Traveling. Whilst they aren’t for everything, they can serve to take the teenager out of his/her ‘comfort zone’ and place them in a new environment. The majority of the time this lets them return at the end of the year to new educational surroundings a more mature and rounded individual, able to take what the world throws at them.

The copyright of the article Gap Year Adventures in South America Travel is owned by Philip Copple. Permission to republish Gap Year Adventures in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.