Personal Benefits Of A Gap Year That Most People Overlook

Personal Benefits Of A Gap Year

  • Develop cross-cultural understanding and competence through cultural immersion.

  • Learn how to communicate when there are different basic vocabularies as a vital tool gained on a gap year.

  • Creative problem solving as a form of taking any challenging situation and turning it into an opportunity - much like a broken down bus in transit, a cultural misstep, or simply being sick while on a gap year.

  • Understand how different environments inform cultural foundation and shape relationships among the earth and local communities.

  • Internationalize perspective on 'living', how it is done and what is viewed as successful in other cultures. Experience all of the different ways to do this thing called life.

  • Evaluate personal values and identify one's own 'best' way of living.

  • Create one's own version of "success" rather than acquiesce to that offered by running the routine.

  • Exploring comfort zones and the self by doing something challenging. Pushing comfort zones allows one to better understand the self and truly know what they are capable of.

  • Laugh at the many cultural-difference- snafu's (e.g. finding out you just told your host family in Spanish that you are "pregnant" instead of "embarrassed").

  • A well-structured gap year program can be part of the lifelong education process and can induce a profound contribution to an individual's personal development.

  • Increased ownership for one's own life-direction.

  • Understand what it means to be a global citizen and own the responsibility that it means in an increasingly multicultural landscape.

Original article posted at: https://www.gapyearassociation.org/data-benefits.php#:~:text=In%20total%2C%201%2C795%20respondents%20began,year%20alumni%20completed%20this%20survey.