why I took several gap years, and you should too
whether it's after high school, college, career shifts, or a tough breakup - resets are essential to finding your purpose
“find yourself”. ok but what the hell does that even mean?
Personally, I think it’s pretty-sounding nonsense. Because the real truth is that you will think you found yourself at 15, at 23, at 76. We are ever-evolving creatures meant to learn lessons until the end. Sounds cliche but the journey really IS the destination.
I mean, is there anything other than experience?
What if your “purpose”(a very mechanical term) is to simply be, to discover what you love, and how you love, and watch yourself grow and fail and win a billion times. How would you change your outlook if you departed from this notion that there’s a linear path from here to happiness?
If you’ve read my other pieces I’m sure Im about to sound like a broken record. My biggest piece of advice - that isn’t so revolutionary - is that you have to get so far out of your comfort zone to quantum leap to who you want to be. Travel is my method, and I firmly believe it should be for every able-bodied human here.
After graduating from university in 2023, I took a year off from the route I always expected myself to be on. Graduate, move to the big city (thank you 90s romcoms), get a sexy corporate job (again, devil wears prada), get married and etc. Unfortunately throughout my life there was a little voice nudging at me - travel now, this is the time to go. So in 2022, I embarked on a study abroad program in a small Italian village near Rome for 6 months. So cliche to say that it changed my life - but I don’t care, because of course it did. How would leaving everything you know to live with strangers in a foreign country NOT change you? I took 2023 to spend as long as I could transversing Europe mostly solo - right until my 3 month visa ended. My love for travel, and unfortunate absence of dual citizenship, has tragically, but wonderfully, disrupted my entire idea of how life is supposed to transgress.
It doesn’t matter how old you are, whether you’ve never left the country, if you’re introverted and prone to anxiety (I was too!), if you have even a tiny pull to travel abroad - you owe it to yourself to make that leap.
There are so many fantastic options for gap years. If you want something more structured and hand-holding - there’s thousands of programs designed for exactly that. EF Gap Year is one option.
I used Workaway, which is a program that connects you with farms, schools, and other organizations around the world to trade your labor for free room and board. Usually the work is minimal, and the experiences can be incredible. I spent two weeks bike riding and eating gelato at a design school in the mountains in Northern Italy a couple summers ago completely for free - just for making stove top espresso every morning and washing a few dishes. Here’s what my shower view looked like:
Travel opens to door to thousands of opportunities, even if they’re just internal ones. The amount of confidence and self-assuredness i’ve gained from my adventures is truly astounding. From being a panic-driven teenager to moving alone to Austria for a year, it’s so very possible for you too once you ignore your fear and give yourself the adventure you’re on this earth to have!
Me in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca in Costa Rica - a must-have on your bucketlist
The Red-Hot Atlas is your digital guide to this transformation through travel. Here for the brave girls with good taste. Subscribe for weekly insights.