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What Would You Do With a Year of Free Time? Hint: Take a Gap Year

Yujing Jean Fan

More students should take time off from school, and take time on in real life. This gives them a chance to rediscover what excites them, and learn what they want, and how they want to.

In the US, it's estimated that only 2% of students take a gap year. That's just an estimation -- no one has actually bothered to track this.

But it's so important. Taking a gap year helps young people build lives they WANT to lead, instead of ones they think they *should* be leading.

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  • Alessandra Rizzotti

    Amazing TED talk Yujing. You should totally write that you're a part of Uncollege in your profile. Don't be modest. You're a changemaker!

  • Liz Dwyer

    There seems to be a growing momentum here in the United States around gap years. However, in a recent conversation a friend suggested to me that we still really only think they're "okay" if the student taking them comes from certain racial or ethnic backgrounds, comes from a middle to upper class family, and has college acceptance already in the bag. I found myself reflecting quite a bit on how these race and class dynamics may be playing out with gap years and I wonder, have others noticed these dynamics at play?