<p>I have been concerned that my senior son is not going to be mature enough to go off to college next fall. He has ADD and learning disabilities plus is the youngest in his class. We should have had him repeat a year of school long ago.
We approached him with a few ideas today. He seems open to the idea of waiting a year to go to school. School is not his favorite place. He is an out of the box kind of thinker and traditional school has been painful for him. He likes the idea of waiting on school till he is a little older and possibly more sure of what he wants to study. He doesn't want to hang around home for another year and we agree.
He did a 30 day backpacking trip with NOLS this summer and would consider another longer trip with them. He loves the outdoors and is also creative and loves art.
Any ideas for some gap year programs? He would do best in a program with structure.
He has applied to colleges and would defer an acceptance. He has no interest in doing the gap year to get into a better school. He feels he just is young and might not be ready.
Aside from academics which are a struggle he is independent and confident.</p>
<p>gapyear.com.</p>
<p>He might also want to consider a year with americorps.</p>
<p>S, 18, is doing a gap year with Americorps, living at home (by his choice) and doing the kind of volunteer work that he loves. I've been impressed by how much he is enjoying this experience, and how much his confidence and maturity have grown. He has a great deal of responsibility, and it's neat to watch how he has been handling it. The Americorps training, too, has been excellent including things such as budgeting, time management and grant writing.</p>
<p>He could get a job. This isn't even a smart-alec suggestion. An actual paying job shows enough responsibility to get and hold a job (a not-inconsiderable feat for a lot of 18-year-olds), and the money might come in useful for paying for college. I don't know how college admissions officers think, but as an employer I would give a year of actual employment more credit than a year of public service of the kind available to most 18-year-olds. You can learn a lot as a sales rep at Best Buy or as an office gofer.</p>
<p>Colleges favorably regard any kind of productive gap year activity including working or volunteering fulltime or doing some kind of planned travel or study.</p>
<p>As for programs like Americorps, those participants are working 40+ hours a week in real jobs. S, whose major duties involve working with a youth program, writes grants, runs meetings, meets with school administrators, has been the guest speaker in two college classes (including for a program that he may be in next year as a freshman!), supervises other volunteers (We laugh about it, but I actually am one of the adult volunteers that he supervises), travels out of town to go to conferences, supervises teens and adults working on volunteer projects, transports teens to volunteer projects, has designed brochures and powerpoint presentations, designed service projects and solicited contributions from businesses.</p>
<p>He has more responsibility than I had on the summer and parttime jobs that I did at his age, which were cashiering and being a clerk typist. Most of the people who meet him through his job assume he's a college graduate not an 18-year-old who just graduated from high school last spring.</p>
<p>Americorps is a wonderful program in that it gives its members the opportunity to run with their talents and interests. Interesting to me, the teen who was terrible at making deadline for school projects works his butt off to make deadline for things like grants because he really likes helping others. Also, the same person who almost didn't graduate because he kept arriving late to his first period class goes to work early and stays late in his Americorps job because he likes it so much and feels such a strong sense of responsibility about the work.</p>
<p>mom60, I'm in favor of a gap year, although my son chose not to do one. For many of his European and Australian friends it was expected. </p>
<p>I think the two biggest obstacles for American kids to overcome are either the cost or the loneliness. If you go with a gap year organization, especially if it involves travel, adventure or volunteer work in another country, it can get quite pricey. If you try to figure it out on your own, you may miss the company of other kids. Having said that, I still think it can be a wonderful experience if planned properly.</p>
<p>It seems to me that the best gap years are broken down into segments. It's really more like 15 months from June to September of the next year so you can easily cover 3 or 4 multi-month activities. A typical combination put together by one boy we know was a language immersion course in Beijing, an internship at his home-town newpaper, a menial job at the summer olympics.</p>
<p>There are plenty of organizations that combine wilderness trekking with volunteer work -- trail maintenance for example. There are also many that offer art related activities in foreign settings. (ArtisTours.com is one we particularly liked.) A third segment with these two might be a job that could help finance the others.</p>
<p>My older son did a nine month Gap and my younger son leaves in five weeks for something similar.</p>
<p>We looked at GAP as a gift of time you might otherwise never receive. Even though we are major travellers there are things we've been unable to do--extended overland travel across Africa (<a href="http://www.madventurers.com%5B/url%5D">www.madventurers.com</a>) , immersive language programs (Cet Academics) . Our boys did/will do both. They also did programs that tested their love of the graphics/animation industry. For my older son, the experience made him realize he didn't want to spend a lifetime in that industry. For my younger son, with an animation product already in production, it could be the opposite reaction. We'll see. </p>
<p>Gap year has some very lonely moments. It helps to get into a group. It helps to stay in the huge hostels with 800 beds and a 24 hour disco with a pool table. It helps to be able to play pick-up basketball. Even though the loneliness usually only lasts for a few weeks--it can be devastating for an 18 year old to eat meals alone and have no mates to call. A certain amount of stoicism and pluckiness is required, I'd say--along with an easy social manner. I've known kids who have nearly died of loneliness on GAP--but they were kids who had some significant social difficulties at home too.</p>
<p>We'd let my kid do a gap year (in fact I'd encourage it) IF and ONLY IF it required no financial assistance from us. That's because the "deal" we have with our kids is that we'll pay for 4 years of college after high school. We are not interested in financing a "growing" experience someplace, or paying for him to volunteer someplace. </p>
<p>I kind of feel like we've already paid for our kids to grow up. </p>
<p>Now, if he found something he wanted to do that would also support him, that would be an entirely different story.</p>
<p>This is NOT a put-down to what other families choose. (Many families have more money than us, for one thing.) It's just the choice we've presented to our kids.</p>
<p>If anybody is going to do some life-enriching "vacationy" thing, it's going to be my H and I. ;)</p>
<p>Just my 2¢.</p>
<p>My son wanted and took a gap year with solid support from us (the condition was get admitted somewhere, then defer). He needed it, deserved it and made good use of the time (art school semester, then worked on a ranch in Argentina and traveled on his own at the end for 10 days, had his shoulder repaired and worked in a video store) (PS: shoulder injury was not part of the ranch experience but from his pre-gap sheltered life at home with friends!)</p>
<p>His year was much less expensive than a college year and a high return investment in terms of maturity, confidence, self-reliance and a perspective on the culture here at home. </p>
<p>I heartily endorse the Americorps option and have also read, on this board I think, about something similar called CityYear. Service organizations like the Unitarian Univeralist Service Committee and American Friends Service Committee have also been open to kids working with their projects. </p>
<p>If you start networking now for potential jobs or projects or programs you are likely to find a range of good choices and I think you'll all be glad you gave him the opportunity.</p>
<p>CityYear is probably the premier Americorps program, and is located in several major cities and smaller cities around the country. I have visited the one in Boston, and was extremely impressed. The daughter of one CC parent did the CityYear program in Seattle, and had a good experience.</p>
<p>As is the case with all Americorps programs, volunteers can run with their talents and interests and can take on as much responsibility as they can handle. These experiences particularly are good for students who are smart, and motivated to volunteer, but may not know yet what they want to do as a career or in college. The program has a good combination of structure -- regular hours, health-oriented activities, skills training -- and flexibility to run with your ideas. </p>
<p>Here's a description and link:
"City Year unites young people ages 17 to 24 from diverse economic, racial, and geographical backgrounds for a year of full-time service to their communities. The City Year corps embodies the ideals of City Year and its belief in the power of young people to effect positive, lasting social change. Every day, corps members work with the spirit of idealism, the discipline of hard work, the purpose of shared goals and the pride of representing their generation.</p>
<p>During the ten-month program, City Year corps members engage in a variety of activities to meet critical needs in their communities. They are primarily focused on the education and development of youth, serving as mentors for children in partnership with public schools and organizing and running after-school programs and curricula on important social issues including domestic violence prevention, AIDS awareness, and diversity. </p>
<p>Corps members are also responsible for leading children in signature City Year programs including Young Heroes, a leadership development program for middle school students, and Camp City Year, a weeklong recreational and service learning program offered during students' school breaks. </p>
<p>In addition to making an impact on the lives of children across the country, corps members also lead their fellow citizens in completing high-impact service projects, playing a crucial role in large-scale City Year events such as Serve-a-thon, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and cyzygy. Through these events, corps members are able to bring together people from all walks of life, reinforcing City Year's belief that service is a powerful way to unite diverse individuals in strengthening their communities. "
<a href="http://www.cityyear.org/about/programs/youthcorps.cfm%5B/url%5D">http://www.cityyear.org/about/programs/youthcorps.cfm</a></p>
<p>My daughter also did CityYear- Americorps after high school.
Kids with LDs often do seem younger than their peers, mine was very repsonsible, but she just wasn't jazzed about heading off to college, even though she applied to 4 and was accepted to all.
I would ditto what NSM says re CityYear, it is structured and not only gives students a focused year off contributing to their communities, but gives them a lot of skills in working with new situations and people.
( the education voucher doesn't hurt either)
D also added a school, that would have been a big reach before CityYear to her new list, because the schools that she had applied to wouldn't allow her to defer, but just wanted her to reapply. She was accepted to the reach school with good aid, and she graduated this past spring.</p>
<p>My parents had a similar attitude weenie. 'Get a job!' was my dad's dinner table refrain. I had to pay for my JYA because he didn't like the sound of the program.</p>
<p>I decided to do things differently. From where I stand at 49, there seems to be plenty of time to work and not enough time for extended travel. I cannot leave my projects for too long a time--although I have had a few short GAP months in my adult life.</p>
<p>The Gap Year for S1 wasn't inexpensive but it was value for money. S1 went to college knowing exactly what he wanted to do--in fact he took a semester leave last semester because he had so many extra credits and wanted to stay on Capital Hill. We saved a semester of tuition while he earned some significant salary and bonus (!) dollars and CV points. His summer immersive language programs (2) covered four semesters of language at college--again a savings of $10K for us.</p>
<p>My guess is that his first job out of college will be better paying because of his six months writing policy and hearing reports for Congress.</p>
<p>Anyway, I appreciate that every family has different ideas and budgets. There is no one way to peel the apple. There are literally millions of paths to similar goals.</p>
<p>My young cousin is renovating her house--herself!! She and her husband learned to hang dry wall and renovate during their two years with Americorps.</p>
<p>i'm not a parent or anything (actually a high school senior), but i think taking a gap year would be a wonderful idea. my mom is all for it, she thinks it would be nice for me to take a year off from studying before jumping into it again for 8, maybe 12 years for me (if i decide to get a PhD along with my DVM). she's very supportive of my plan of taking a year of to get an internship at the Morven Park Equine Hospital (which is headed jointly by the vet schools of UMD and V Tech), because she thinks it'd be great experience for me especially since i would like to become an equine vet. if it's something that you think is worthwhile and meaningful (volunteering for something you love, or working towards your future goal), i say you should go do it.</p>
<p>If you want to be an equine vet, you should know that many stables and vet practices in England, Australia and New Zealand routinely take on young trainees and proived them with room board and small stipend. It is very easy to see the world AND get great experience in your field.....</p>
<p>oh wow, thanks for great tip, cheers :)
i will definitely look into that. i've wanted to be an equine vet since i was 5 years old, plus i've always wanted to visit England and look at the pretty horses :D</p>
<p>Thank you everyone. I am going to send him the links for americorps.
Mmaah would you mind giving a few details about the art course your child took.
He would like to get out of our community. He will have many friends who will be staying in town and working and going to the local community college. They aren't motivating and he see's himself getting dragged down. When he did his NOLS trip he finally felt like he had found people who think like he does.
I like the idea of breaking the year into mini sections. It would definitely include a portion of wilderness expedition. He is interested in pushing himself both in body and mind. He is looking forward to spending time away from civilization.
As far as cost. I do believe there is value in work and supporting yourself. This is not a kid who expects things to be given to him. I think taking a year before college will make the college experience much more worthwhile for him.
Any art related programs. Artistours seems to be just for the summer.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Any art related programs. Artistours seems to be just for the summer.
[/quote]
mom60, I don't know where you live, but most museums and art schools offer year round opportunities to take courses or volunteer.</p>
<p>If your son definitely wants a live-away from home arts experience, then you could look at one of the European art schools like SACI in Florence. This may take some research as it's always hard to find programs that are suitable for that inbetween period after high school and before college.</p>
<p>If you want to pay for it, do whatever you want, but I really see no reason why you should feel obligated to do so. It might not even be the best choice. Getting a job might be the wiser decision for his future. Since you say academics are a struggle, he might not be the best candidate for a traditional college-as-career-training plan. Instead, he should use this time to work on what he is good at. You say he likes art–does he have a legitimate talent at it? He could get a paid internship as a graphic designer, see if that’s something he’d be interested in doing.</p>
<p>Other sites for gap year ideas:
[College</a> Alternative | Gap Year Programs | Study Abroad | Leap Now](<a href=“http://www.leapnow.org/]College”>http://www.leapnow.org/),
[Working</a> Holiday Visas in Australia and How It All Works | BootsnAll Travel Articles](<a href=“http://www.bootsnall.com/articles/09-06/working-holiday-visas-in-australia-and-how-it-all-works.html]Working”>Working Holiday Visas in Australia and How It All Works - BootsnAll Travel Articles),
<a href=“Freelance Copywriting - Websites. Blogs. Hollywood style Brand Stories”>Freelance Copywriting - Websites. Blogs. Hollywood style Brand Stories,
[Mind</a> the Gap!: 11 Amazing Ways to Spend a Year Off Before College](<a href=“http://www.education.com/magazine/article/mindthegap/]Mind”>Browse All Educational Resources | Education.com),</p>