What’s A Gap Year, Anyway?

Believe it or not, there is a group called the “American Gap Association.”  Here’s their official definition of a gap year:

“A gap year is a structured period of time when students take a break from formal education to increase self-awareness, challenge comfort zones, and experiment with possible careers.”

Traditionally a time when students, often between high school and college, take a year to find focus, mature, ready themselves to maximize the opportunity of higher learning, and go abroad to legally drink, the concept has grown in popularity and acceptance. A gap year typically involves traveling, with the goals of expanding one’s world, learning new cultures and connecting students with possible routes to life-long passions.

So our question, jealously asked by my wife Lisa and I, is: why do the kids get to have all the fun?! We’re all students of life, right? We  all could use a dose of self-awareness. Our comfort zones have become pretty entrenched in the routine, the couch and our electronic devices. As entrepreneurs, we’re perpetually in search of our careers. We deserve a gap year, and in fact, so do our kids at an even earlier age than is typically average.

With that, we conceived our gap year, which borrowed the concept so brilliantly created by folks in the United Kingdom in the 1970s as a way to fill the 7 to 8 month gap between final exams and the beginning of University. In our version, however, we expanded upon and added elements to suit our prejudiced needs. I do truly believe that part of a successful, happy life is to never stop being a student; so that part of the expansion of the concept was easy. Discovering wonderful wines and culturally relevant shots like ouzo is merely a bonus. Certainly self-discovery and reflection are also components of any great adventure, as is challenging comfort zones – so we could still be, if not a member, at least a distant faction of the AGA.

What’s missing from the textbook description for us, however, is the notion of connection. This is a central part of our mission in life and core value as a family. Whether it is seeking great connection with each other, new cultures, diverse peoples, new experiences, broader perspectives or the world at large, we really think connection is one of the greatest gifts we can imprint on our children and on each other. Yes, of course the danger of over-connection is high, and when we’re holed up in a cramped room in Yangshuo with weary, cranky kids that never leave on the magical schoolbus for several hours each day, I will most likely downplay the connection theme… But in general, connections feel like they are slipping away, even in a world with more digital connectedness than ever.

There’s also the “slow it down” underlying message a gap year transmits that is equally appealing to us. For students, the message is not to necessarily rush into college or university life automatically, robotically following a pre-determined path of lecture halls, dorm pranks and fraternity mixers. For us, the message is to recognize the speed in which the years fly by in the form of soccer games, homework assignments, dinner parties, work trips, home improvement projects and folding laundry is only increasing; and soon our very, very full nest will be drafty and quiet. So we need to take a breadth. We yearn to slow it down. We want to enjoy each other’s company. We want a break from the routine. We hope to turn off the distractions.

We need a gap year.