Falling into the Gap

Updated 9/12/08

Grace Philipp looks relaxed sitting in a café in Seville, Spain. It’s a warm spring day in the south of the country, which to a New Yorker is as good as beach weather, but the 18-year old is not exactly on a spring break.

Not sure what she wanted to do or study when she graduated high school last year, Philipp deferred admission to Grinnell College, in Iowa, and took off on what has become known as a gap year – a term that has gained popularity in the United States with schools like Princeton and Harvard universities endorsing that students take some time off between high school and college.

Phillipp has never taken a Spanish class. But she sits, and sips on a thick, chocolate drink that was ordered in a perfect Spanish accent. The Spanish that she knows, ‘just enough to get by’ by her description, was picked up over the first half of her gap year, teaching in Costa Rica and visiting Mexico.

“People on the street are always surprised to find out I’m an English-speaker,” she said. “Maybe I’m being modest or maybe it’s just the [southern] politeness.”

Holly Bull, director for the Center for Interim Programs, which helps students plan a gap year, said as pressures on high school students increase more Americans are trying to avoid a “burnout” by taking a year to explore their interests outside of the classroom.

“Often the focus seems to be on getting into college,” she said. “Somewhere in there the love of life and the love of learning and the mind get lost in that whole process.”

The idea of a delaying college might have been a little extreme 20 years ago, around the time when Bull’s father founded Interim. But Bull said they now have offices Massachusetts and New Jersey, and have helped more than 5,500 students in 10 years. She said statistical evidence is not yet available to show its popularity, but as the pressure put on students rises with the cost of tuition, taking some time to figure things out is an idea that’s resonating with today’s students.

“Everyone thinks the second half of senior year is a break since you’ve already been accepted to colleges. But it’s not a break,” Philipp said. “You have to keep up your GPA and finish things you’ve started. I took four [advanced placement] classes my senior year. I needed a break.”

Top-tier colleges feel the same way. In February of this year, Princeton publicized its goal to initiate a “bridge year,” hoping that 10 percent of its incoming freshman class would choose to volunteer abroad before starting classes at the university. Harvard has been suggesting students take time off for the past 30 years, according to an essay on the college’s undergraduate admissions Web site.

Each fall between 40 and 80 students defer admission to Harvard for one year, according to an e-mail from the school’s admissions office, and the number has increased by 7 percent for this fall.

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Bull said many students don’t leave high school with the passion for learning that will lead them to a successful freshman year in college.

“Since the beginning I felt like a piece of cattle,” said Lucy McCann, 19, who is in New Zealand for the last part of her gap year. “[I was] being herded through the halls and into the classrooms only to be stuffed with a precise curriculum that would help me pass a standardized test.”

Bull said the key element to the gap year is that students, for the first time in their lives, get to choose the path they want to take.

“There is a difference when someone feels they have a choice and a hand in their life” she said. “The gap year is all about that.”

Philipp spent the first half of her gap year in San Cristóbal, Costa Rica, teaching English and working on some environmental projects. During her winter break, she spent two months at home in Rye, N.Y. with her family, and then left for Spain, where she is interning at a travel agency. In about a month, Philipp will pack up again – this time for a shorter trip – to work as an au pair for a family in Madrid.

Philipp recalls her hectic high school career, “I had class all day without a free period some years, I copy-edited for the literary magazine, I directed some shows, co-rewrote and directed parts of Antigone and I volunteered at the immigration center [in town].” She spoke as if it was ages ago, but graduation was less than a year ago.

Bull said the maturation process that occurs during a gap year is one of its greatest benefits. She said society tends to infantilize teenagers and too many college students graduate without really knowing what they can handle. They end up having to take on a job and living on their own all at once.

“A gap year is a steep learning experience,” she said. “You may know the drill of the classroom but not have those living skills.”

McCann is on the fourth and final program of her gap year, which she planned through Interim. She is in Turangi, New Zealand on a work internship with The Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre in exchange for room and board.

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McCann wanted to narrow her interests before starting college at James Madison University in her home state of Virginia. Unfortunately, she said, she has loved everything she’s done equally, but said the skills she has learned during her year will be applicable to anything she decides to do in the future.

“What’s been the best are just the odd skills I’ve picked up,” she said. “Anything from working a fax machine to building a [bad weather] shelter … in Greece.”

McCann’s gap year has been busy. She started off in Crete, Greece, volunteering with The Sea Turtle Protection Society; then to France, working at a Shambhala Buddhist Meditation Center; and before New Zealand, she was in Costa Rica, volunteering at an environmental education school. McCann said her experiences – caring for baby sea turtles, rock climbing, and teaching special needs children, to name a few – have all been once in a lifetime opportunities.

McCann, however had to face another kind of life experience.

On April 15, about two months before McCann was scheduled to return home, The Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre was faced with hardship. Six students and one teacher, who were canoeing with the Centre were killed when a flash flood caused the water flow in the gorge to rise unexpectedly, according to the New Zealand Herald.

McCann couldn’t discuss details of the event, but she said it was a difficult yet strengthening experience.

“It will be hard to get back to normal,” she said. “But [it has made] everyone come together.”

Bull said McCann’s placement at the centre, as a sort of “jack of all trades” that doesn’t necessarily participate in the outdoor trips, did not put her in jeopardy and that the placement has a strong track record of safety.

“[McCann] is dealing with it as a life experience,” she said. “She has had to deal with something that has happened, but there are ups and downs with everything.”

Bull said McCann and her parents both felt well-supported by the Centre and were happy with the way the situation was handled. She said in Interim’s history a student has never been hurt.

Despite a difficult situation, McCann said her gap year has been the best experience of her life and that she would “absolutely” do it again and, in fact, plans to.
Philipp, who will return home from Madrid just in time to celebrate her 20th birthday with friends and family, talks about her upcoming freshman year at Grinnell with more excitement than she said she would have a year ago – explaining “that really cliché feeling you get when you walk on campus and you know it’s just the perfect fit.”
She said when she graduated high school she wasn’t sure what she wanted to study. Now, she wants to study psychology, writing, political relations, international affairs, as many languages as she can fit into her schedule and education.
So did she lack drive, as she describes a good gap year candidate?
“My drive was to do a gap year,” she said.