Hi guys!
Today I decided to talk a bit about gap years and my experience with a gap year to hopefully help a few people who might be thinking about taking a gap year after school, but they aren’t sure if they should.
First let’s start off with what a gap year is. I don’t know if the term “gap year” is used everywhere in the world, but it’s basically if you decide to not go study or work full-time after you finished your last year of school. Usually during gap years, people would travel, get a part-time job, focus on hobbies, etc. I truly feel like a gap year, if planned and spent efficiently, could be very beneficial.
I finished school last year and I’m currently taking a gap year. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any time to plan mine, because until January, I wasn’t going to take a gap year. Why is that? Well, here’s what happened.
I was going to study law via e-learning through a university that I will not be naming, as I don’t want to throw shade. I got my conditional acceptance letter last year. How application as a grade 12 student works here in South Africa, is you apply in grade 12 with your final grade 11 marks. Then the university can conditionally accept you or decline you, depending on whether your marks meet the set criteria for the course you applied to. Conditional acceptance doesn’t mean you have been accepted to study the following year, because your final grade 12 marks will determine that. I guess the purpose of conditional acceptance is basically to inform you the year before your studies if you will be considered according to your grade 12 marks, so that you can plan ahead for the years to come.
So I got conditionally accepted to this university. I was even considered a top achiever with my grade 11 marks. So, grade 12 finals came to pass and we got our final results early Januaey this year. The school sent our marks to the universities we applied to, so we didn’t have to do it. A few days after we got our results, I got quite the e-mail from the university.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I was going to study via e-learning. The university I was going to study through was a good 1000km from me, but it was a good law university, so that is why I was going to study with e-learning.
The e-mail I received kindly informed me that the university was terminating the distance learning programme, which meant all my plans for this year went down the drain. I could move to the province where the university is located, but it was too last minute, as I didn’t apply for student accommodation and I had my horse here that I had to take care of. The area where the university is, is also not the best, so I didn’t want to live there.
A few days later, my final acceptance letter came through, but, of course, I had to decline.
At this point, I knew I was going to have to take a gap year. I didn’t have any other choice, because I had my head set on this uni, that I didn’t even apply to any other university. Now, if you are applying to university, PLEASE apply to more than one. I never thought a university would drop so many students so last minute, but it happened. So please always have a back-up plan.
I wasn’t able to apply no any other universities, because applications were already closed. Luckily I found a university that offers online short courses, so that is how I ended up doing a 16-week law course. That course is now finished, though, so I still have 6 months to go before I will be able to study.
So far, there have been good and bad things that came from this gap year.
I had time to take driving lessons and in a few weeks, I had my lisence. I also had time to work through some new horse training methods and now I am re-training my horse with positive reinforcement (I’ll do a post on that at some point).
Since I didn’t have any plans in advance, I do have a lot of time on my hands, which gets quite boring. All of my friends are at uni, so I barely get to see them, and it does get very lonely. Only going to uni next year also means I will be going with a group of people I don’t know at all, so that does stress me out a bit, but I’ll worry about that when next year comes around.
All in all, I do feel pretty 50/50 on how this year turned out. But I do feel that everything happens for a reason and that I wasn’t meant to do that law course.
If there is anything I want people who might be applying to university or college or contemplating a gap year to take from this post, it is this:
- Have a back-up plan: Apply to more than one college/university, just in case your initial plans fall through.
- If you are taking a gap year, plan thoroughly to make sure you know exactly what you will be doing the whole year.
- Stay productive. Once you start sitting around and not doing anything, you will start getting lazy and suddenly becoming productive again will be hard.
To anyone applying to college/university or taking a gap year: Good luck and have fun!
– M
Black & White Thoughts 