What is your thought on a high school senior deciding to take a year off after his senior year and just working before going on to college?
He basically says he’s just sick of school.
What is he going to major in? Is he going to forget all the material by the time he does go to college, and be behind his classmates?
What is he going to be doing for the year?
On the plus side, if he is really all that sick of school will he even make it through college? If he gets a decent job, and wants to keep it instead of going to college, there might be a tuition savings.
So it depends on the kid.
He can spend some time learning about the grocer’s apostrophe.
Speaking as a high school graduate (no applause, please), I can say that in theory, it’s a terrific idea.
On the other hand, as a college graduate, I can say that my college years were the most rewarding and fun of my life. Starting down a path that might lead permanently away from higher education would have been a terrible thing for me.
Also, the idea that working at a high school graduate-level job is better than continuing your education is a highly debatable proposition.
That would definitely be one of the upside’s of the experience.
Better to go to college with the mindset that is ready for it.
If that’s right away wonderful. But if not? Work. Get some life experience.
Has he been accepted at any universities? Universities these days usually allow deferment of enrollment for a gap year, so I would encourage him to apply and get an acceptance before just taking the year off.
My niece took a gap year with no ill effects. Her mother (my sister) let her know that she was expected to do something, whether it was working a job or just an interesting activity. She ended up interning at a local public radio station, giving music lessons, and traveling around to visit friends who were attending colleges on the West Coast.
I can’t say if it was better or worse than going into college immediately, but I don’t think it was wasted time.
Does he already have a full-time job? If not he’s wasting his time. Gap years tend to turn into gap decades.
No idea where he’s going to school. I’m fine with a gap year, but I’d suggest enrolling in summer semester for the following year and taking a couple of classes then. Summer semester enrollment is fairly common these days where I went to college at FSU. The students get familiar with the campus, college life, and what a college class entails.
Not everyone is cut out for scholarship. Let him do what he thinks he needs to do. He might decide he doesn’t need college; he might decide to become a professional student rather than face the real world again.
The important thing is, he’ll be making his own decisions and living with the consequences, which is something a lot of people today don’t start doing until they’re in their mid-20s.
If his head isn’t in school, I would not force him to go. Consider letting him take his gap year or two but taking a class or two in community college just to keep his head in studies so he doesn’t completely fall out of the habit. Those are credits he can use if/when he decides to apply to college. It might even help him decide what he wants (or does not want) to focus on when he does go back. So yeah, work, bit of school. Not a terrible option. Even a great one for some.
My gap year over four decades ago had me serious about my education when I started college the following year.
I’d say that being sick of high school doesn’t at all equate to being sick of college. They’re sufficiently different both socially AND academically that I’d be willing to bet that most of the issues that would frustrate a high school senior aren’t really there in college. The classes are aimed at more mature people, with (generally) less bullshit and busy work, there’s no standardized testing, there’s no requirement that you be there, the rules are in large part, the same as being an adult, and most colleges and universities are big enough that you can find your own particular niche and not have to deal with popularity, or being ‘cool’ or any of that.
I’d almost say that he should go for a year, THEN decide if he wants to do something else.
Not that it’s the right choice for everyone, but I think that taking a year off is a good idea for someone who’s “sick of school” (although as per bump’s post above, it’d depend on what parts of school he’s sick of).
I’ve seen cases where a year or more of extra maturity and “real world” experience make a person a better, more responsible, more motivated student.
FWIW, I wish I’d done that.
I don’t know whether I’d have wound up going to college or not, if I had. But, if I’d taken a year or three and then gone to college, I’m sure I’d have gotten a whole lot more out of it.
I think taking some time off if he’s sick of school is a good idea. The college freshmen who don’t want to be there tend to be the ones who crash and burn, wasting money and / or semesters of Pell Grant eligibility. College will always be there. He may as well wait until he’s in a good headspace to take advantage of it.
Pretty much the only disadvantage is that he may have to re-learn subjects that are “use it or lose it,” like math or foreign languages, but that can be dealt with by taking a course at a community college while working.
My brother took not one gap year but 5, 4 of them in the Air Force by which time he had discovered the joys of reading (science-fiction, but it was reading) and the lack of joy of a mundane job. Although he was in the bottom quintile of his HS class and the top quintile of college boards. The sum being 6 got him an entree to Penn State (but not the main campus) and he finished near the top and discovered his life’s work.
I think the only possible answer to the OP is, it depends. For my brother it worked great. For me, going straight worked well.
I’m all in favor of it. By that point, you’ve had school nonstop for a 10-12 years. You need a good break to step back, think about things, etc. One friend recommended that people work a minimum-wage job for a couple of years in between high school and college, in order to make them appreciate the difference that a college-income level job could make for them in the future.
A minimum of one year of work should be a requirement for going to college. It is certainly not “Time Off”, it’s work. College is time off.
BINGO!
My brother and I both took gap years before it had a buzzword, and we’ve never regretted it.
I worked at Target, where you see everybody, and a lot of people were really shocked that I was doing this. “What did your parents say about it?”, that kind of thing. They were supportive for all the reasons mentioned above, and a lot of those people came back at Christmas and told me that I had done the right thing and they weren’t returning for the spring semester. Our sister took a semi-gap year halfway through, although a major reason was because she got in trouble with her credit cards and our parents refused to bail her out, and she ended up graduating a semester “late” by filling in the gap with summer classes.