College students should be encouraged to take gap year between junior, senior year

I’ve been out of college for two years now. The first year, I had a job within my major. Since then, I’ve been waitressing, “living” and applying myself toward becoming active in my career — or a similar career — again. Being in this economy’s job market for two-plus years continues to grant me clarity; you don’t fully realize what you want — and need — from college until you’re out. I’m not negating the inherent accomplishment and advantage of simply possessing any college degree.

But I think college students should seriously consider taking a year off of school between their junior and senior year, and they should be encouraged to do so.

If I had another year of school I could go back to right now, I’d:
1. Develop a skill outside of my major to diversify my skills and sustain my life through career bumps
2. Know what’s actually required in my job
3. Work more accurately with my strengths and weaknesses
4. More deliberately balance work and play
5. Take my courses with less of an ego: without the blind anxiousness of not knowing what’s on the real world’s exam, or an overconfident assumption that I didn’t need to know or understand the rules of the industry to have it make room for me

I watched two friends leave school for a year and come back with perspective. I watched another finish school in three years then switch careers. I spent my final semester in a New York City program, meeting with countless professionals. But I also was traveling with 30 other majors to these meetings, so I didn’t actually learn the subway system until half-way through the semester, and I had to fight to have space to think for myself.

And that’s what getting out of college, and into your “real world” life, most requires from you: the ability to think for yourself. Not doing, but deciding what to do, and when, and choosing over and over again to do it or not to do it.

Of course, no life is smooth or perfectly prepared. But diving into a job, internship or an apartment, or an overseas trip without a full degree starts getting us all accustomed to that, and better equips us to be our own guides through life. This option could enrich your post-college experience and make the most of the college experience itself.

Kristin Morris
SU Class of 2011
BFA Musical Theater