Gap Year: Growth Strategy or Justified Delay?

I grew up in a country where education has been made to look like everything one can do or have in their life. It’s more of a never ending cycle for us all, once you are of school going age, you’re kept in the educational system until you complete the university, that’s if your family can afford that. After university, you’re expected to find a well paying job, take on some responsibilities , get married and live a happy life. This is the picture that has been pained in our minds since the day we were born and I can tell you , almost 90% of young ones today are living with that mindset.

School is good,yes. But our whole lives shouldn’t revolve around it as we have seen in recent years. I for some have been in the educational system for as long as I can remember. Everyone was going to school so it looked normal to me. I was that one kid that loved school so much , thanks to my love for reading. As I grew up, I got into junior high school, wrote my exams and passed to start senior high school. In senior high school, I started to think ahead, trying to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life because from there, the next stage was to go to the university.

I didn’t want to be one of those people who go to the university just because everyone is going. I understood that the course I would pursue in the university would influence a lot of things I will want to pursue later on and so I didn’t want to rush things. My classmates on the other hand had their reasons for going to the university. Some wanted to join their boyfriends there, others were just following the crowd and then we had those that were just going with the flow.

Fast forward , we completed senior high school and I still wasn’t certain on what I wanted to read in the university. The funny part of all this is that where I come from , not going to the university right after senior high school meant that you are behind in life and your friends from high school would even stop associating with you because you are a ‘failure’. Funny right, yeah. I applied for the university, but I wasn’t sure on what I wanted to study so when applications came out, I told my parents I didn’t want to go and I would prefer to take a gap year to explore my options before.

As I expected, my parents were really okay with that and that was all I needed. I lost so many friends because of that as they were now university students and I was a high school graduate. Levels don change you know. This gap year I took has been one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life and I do not regret it one bit. Why because I used this opportunity to discover who I really was, what I was passionate about and also learn some new skills. This one year wasn’t a year wasted on my end, it was a year of growth.

I went out more, researched, read a lot of book and learnt how to sew and do other stuff just to equip myself with real like skills and experiences. While my mates were away in university, I was grooming myself life never before. Eventually, the next school year applications opened and I applied again to the university with a clear idea of what I wanted to do and where I was headed. It felt good and that decision is the reason why I am where I am today and being able to do all that I can do today.

From this experience of mine, I also advised some of my friends and family to take gap years sometimes to look back and reflect on tenor journey, restrategize and come back stronger. Life is not a race, you move at your own pace and do what’s best for you. That’s all that matters at the end of the day.

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all images belong to me.

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