Preparation for Essay 2 - Gap Years - Critique of Source #2

Dillon Waugh

Hayes

English 100 – 9:10

2/6/13

Word Count: 627

Gap Year – Critique #2

In a column in the Tampa Bay Times, Emily Harwell promotes the consideration of a gap year between high school graduation and college attendance for the practical and livelihood experience to attain, gathering the testimonials of students who made the most of such periods to back her claim, to interesting effect toward her purpose. Although such quotes and accounts only clearly prove the obvious – that gap years can be valuable, if not necessarily that one will be thankful for having taken one in most cases – those testimonials are indeed insightful, from the viewpoints of those who’ve taken much out of their gap years. It is assuming that one takes into account the measures that they recommend that I myself see no relevant drawbacks to a gap year – however, with the article’s construction out of nothing but snippets of personal insights, the students’ approval and tips as provided may be insufficient to boost faith in students’ choosing to take them in skeptics.

The main recommendation that strengthens the case for a gap year is one that, according to Harwell, two of the three students quoted in the column, Gates Lucas and Corey Kimer, explicitly make: planning for the period, just as one who plans to go straight into college would plan for that – indeed, “Kimer approached planning his gap year as a college search, by considering cost, his goals and the opportunities available”, Harwell relays, and as personal, physical and psychological enrichment was his goal, he went on to spend the year assisting on a Spanish farm and living at an Indian ashram with an organization’s help. This is evidence through practice that there is indeed much to be accomplished even to an essential student in a single free year – provided they know what direction to head in once the starting gun goes off.

It’s also in the students’ statements that address to concerns of skeptics appear – both Lucas and third student Phy Tran allude to the initial disapproval of their plans to take gap years among friends and family, with the latter’s friends suggesting she had “gone wild” and the former’s parents believing it would be “a waste” when one could attain a degree a year faster. The refutation stands simply in the fact that they were wrong. Would it be proof enough for one who knows nobody who has actually gone through a gap year to know that the concerns of a handful of others whose friend or young relative expressed interest in taking a gap year for nothing? If not, may it help to offer suggestions as to just why those few gap years – in case they imagine that their skepticism is based on some impression that for most a gap year is indeed a wasted, idle year’s break from education – meant something, such as that Lucas and Tran had drawn up and organized plans? Certain other clear appeals in favor of gap years don’t appear at all: what of the idea that a youth could use theirs to get a taste of life outside the school system and schedule at age eighteen as opposed to twenty-four?

An extra bit of appreciation may also prove possible to draw from the stay-on-your-educational-track side of the podium with the suggestion that either along with or just after plotting the course or writing a checklist of things to accomplish for a gap year, a student looks into college and/or applies for a spot in one – emphasizing that the purpose of a gap year is not to run from the scrutiny and structure of formal education, and recommending that just in case a youth’s gap year doesn’t play out according to plan, they know where to head and what to do once the period ends.