Perhaps because Princeton actively encourages gap year, that’s the topic that dominated the Q/A session at the Preview Day this past year. Even in one of the letters in the welcoming package, it encouraged looking into that possibility. And that was aside from their Bridge Year Program. My son wanted to take a gap year irregardless and I was all for it. In fact, I even encouraged my older son to take a gap year along so we could have family travels and otherwise family quality time together.
When we made our decision to take a gap year, we didn’t look around to see who else is doing it or what they might think of our decision. We did it for our own reason. Whether the idea is normalized now or not was totally immaterial. Why should it? You want to take a gap year, then take a gap year. If you’re thirsty, drink your water. Hungry? Then eat.
This gap year has been very fruitful, productive, memorable and rejuvenating for not just both my boys but for us as parents, too. For my older son, the gap year gave him some valuable pre-med opportunities, such as operating room shadowing, volunteer around the world in Panama, etc., while for my Princeton-bound son, he had an opportunity to open his music studio and currently teaching violin and piano to several students while producing music for his YouTube channel. Together, they continued to renew their tennis rivalry. They’re traveling together to Nashville next month for a tennis tournament. As a family we traveled to San Diego, Seattle, Canada, Chicago and later this summer, to South Korea for a month. At home we played Pickleball, tennis, hiking, and LOTS of cooking and eating. What NOT to like about gap year?
Oh, unlike my boys’ undistinguished gap year, look at what this Princeton-bound kid did during his gap year:
19-year-old American becomes youngest person to row solo across Atlantic Ocean
http://abcnews.go.com/International/19-year-american-youngest-person-row-solo-atlantic/story?id=52686222