Why We Should Have a Gap Year After High School
Taking a gap year after high school wasn’t encouraged by my teachers.
Finishing education at 18 though, and thinking you know what you want to do with the rest of your life is crazy. Apart from my doctor friend Charlotte, I was probably one of the most set among my friends in what I wanted to do for a career, but that enthusiasm was soon crushed by my English teacher.
“There aren’t any jobs in journalism, choose something else” – Mr DeMarco, repeatedly.
Disheartened, and not wanting to waste three years and £4000ish (so cheap back in 2003 hey?), I let a friend pick a course for me out of a prospectus I’d been flicking through earlier. “Yeah I’ll get those grades easy, that’ll do”.
And so off I went to study Communication Studies at Sheffield Hallam, which I didn’t particularly like from day one if I’m honest but I stuck with until the end – give or take a few lectures. I even managed to pick up a Minor in Journalism along the way, despite what old Mr DeMarco had advised.
I’ll show him, I thought.
Why we should have a gap year after high school
At John Taylor High School it was all about carrying on to university. The sense of fear was instilled in us that we’d ‘miss out on what our peers were doing’, that ‘we’d fall behind’, that ‘we’d forget how to study’, if we dared to venture off into the big wide world.
And so I, like 90% of my friends at the time, went on to spend three years at university in England. Bit like school, but boozier, and waaaayyy more expensive.