As the school year comes to a close, many students are conflicted in which path to pursue their future. Most students are already planning their freshman year at universities, or not planning to continue on to college at all and jumping right into the workforce. Society tends to only give two options when it comes to our futures; either you are on the path to success, or stuck working a minimum wage job the rest of your life. However, a certain few students are so burnt out at the end of their senior year that all they want is a year off: a gap year.
Most people argue that unless one immediately enrolls in college, they never will. Society’s bias dictates and limits the job opportunities available to graduates who do not immediately attend college. Society judges them as having small dreams and narrow life expectations. I cannot help but disagree with the world’s opinion. Students that take a year off between college and high school learn just as much as their peers, only in life experiences. Sure, they may be behind when it comes to their education, but they are ahead of the curve when it comes to actually supporting themselves.
Some students plan to get their credits taken care of at community college while working full time, saving up to transfer to their college of choice. Not only is this a practical choice but a cheaper one. Community college is much less expensive for students to get their mandatory credits out of the way. Then, the transition into college will solely be to focus on the creation of one’s future.
The students that are in the same boat as I, unsure of their career choices and nervous to find out that time is running short, only want time. We need time to decide what we want to do with our lives. Be that time a semester, a year, or two years, as long as we get back onto the accepted “path of success” at some point, we do not deserve society’s scorn.
Abraham Lincoln once said the great thing about the future is we only have to deal with it a day at a time. We all have time to change our minds about what we want to do, who we want to be, and how we want to create our lives. We do not have to decide everything today; we just have to keep on moving forward, taking the future as it comes.
