The School of Life: Gap Years

First and foremost, you’ll notice that there’s an ‘s’ in my title, “Gap Years”. Yes! If you see the picture that I included in this post, I felt like that person who is flying between high school and college for about 2 – 3 years. Was it terrible? It actually was! Do I regret it? Hmm, no, I don’t. In Indonesia, many students don’t want to take and avoid gap year(s) because it’s somewhat embarrassing. So after graduating from high school, people start asking questions like which campus you got into, what’s your major, etc., which were really annoying to me, and yeah, I couldn’t answer those questions. Another thing that I hated at that time was the reality that I would be left behind by my peers because they were going to college and I was still nothing. But yeah, that was a small-minded version of me back in 2017. But now, I am really grateful that I had to experience gap years in my life because it taught me a lot of important things which I can’t find in any formal educational institution. Those things were dealing with failures and cyber-bullying, making decisions, traveling, meeting new people, learning from mistakes, knowing how hard it is to make money, and many more.

What did I do during gap years?

I think I spent most of my gap years hunting scholarships, traveling, and doing stupid things, LOL. During this period, I finally realized my dream to go abroad, and my first country was Cambodia – I was selected to be one of the Indonesia representatives for the YSEALI STEM Education Workshop 2018. After that event, I felt like it was easier for me to go abroad, which I never expected in my life before. I went to Singapore, Malaysia, China, Japan, and now I am living in South Korea. I also got my first job at Ruangguru as a tutor, and I am really grateful for it. Last but not least, I finally got into several universities in many countries such as the Netherlands, Turkey, Cyprus, China, Japan, and South Korea. One thing that I still can’t believe is that I successfully got all of the fully-funded scholarships from the governments of the three East Asian countries to pursue an undergraduate degree. For me, it was like a miracle because I never thought about it before, I was even rejected by my dream university in Indonesia! But yeah, it actually happened, and I am thinking of making separate posts about this.

So what’s the point? Do I recommend you to take gap years?

I DO recommend taking gap year(s) if you’re the kind of person who likes challenges, wants to experience something new, and already knows what you’re going to do during gap year(s), especially to achieve your goals and dreams. But I want to remind you that gap year(s) is not an easy thing, and that’s why you also have to consider its consequences; I bet you’re going to hate gap year(s) at first but you’ll be grateful for it at the end. If you’ve already decided to take gap year(s), congratulations! Because you guys are brave to be different, to take risks, and to do what you want to do in your life.

The last thing I want to say is please don’t give a damn about what people say if it makes you feel small, unmotivated, or insecure because your life is yours, and you are the one who’s going to experience everything

that happens in your life, not other people. Anyways, good luck to all of the readers for all of the decisions that you guys have made. I hope you guys can achieve all of your goals and dreams.

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Busan, South Korea. In the middle of the COVID-19 epidemic which I hope will be over as soon as possible~

-written on March 8, 2020-