This week I had the rare pleasure of sitting with an old friend in the lunchtime sun, talking about everything and anything. It’s so unusual for us to have this luxury that I didn’t even know about the accident her son had suffered.
He’d been in Paris one evening, calling for an Uber, when a car mounted the pavement and drove into him. Apparently, it wasn’t even an accident. She tells me it’s a thing in Paris now; some kind of cruel ‘game’. The car had different number plates back and front and the occupants haven’t yet been traced. Meanwhile, his body and mind needed time to heal just when he was in the final stages leading to his IB exams. Of course, his results weren’t as good as predicted. As a result, he’s taken a year out to regroup. His mum is doing what every great mum would do; searching for opportunities and keeping him going, but it’s hard when your mates move on, and you suddenly have a year of unplanned time. It takes steely resolve not to feel that life is unfair, and make the most of it.
My gap year wasn’t planned either, but it felt different because it came as the result of my getting far better results than anyone expected; not worse. Also, the decisions I made about what to do with my time were purely based on what crossed my path as interesting. I was free of the responsibility to ‘make the most’ of my time and I’m honestly not sure whether that was a good or bad thing.
The chat with my friend has made me reflect on my gap year and why it was such a good experience for me. The truth is, if I was parenting myself, I would have been horrified by my decisions, so what I have written is partly a message to the parent in me to help me set aside my fears and accept that life experiences are just as important as the ones at home that we can measure against a yardstick.
WORKING TO PAY MY RENT AND SAVE FOR TRAVEL WAS INCREDIBLY GOOD FOR ME:
I was living in a bedsit and had to actually work in the ‘real world’, with people from many different backgrounds. I had worked as an estate agent during my weekends, but looking after myself and paying my own bills was very different. The discomfort of my living circumstances, and the boredom, was a critical part of my learning journey.
- I worked in a car factory where I experienced the daily grind of piecework and the rigid clocking-in and clocking-out.
- I did reconciliation for a pension company where I met a fabulous, leggy, outrageously elegant black woman who taught me never to expect or assume anything.
- I performed credit control for a company that supplies chip fat and realised that my capacity to do the work to a high standard seemed extraordinary to the boss who desperately wanted to hire me.
- I waitressed at every event offered, discovering that silver service was far harder than I’d ever assumed.
- The most consistent temp job involved data input of travellers cheques on a vast open-plan floor of women, which was ruled by a vicious female who watched everyone’s input levels like a hawk to make sure we kept to speed. We had to raise a hand to secure our toilet break, which would be timed to the second.
All of this taught me humility and respect for the hard work done by so many, and gave me the hunger to secure a better job than the ones I had experienced.
TRAVELLING ALONE:
My choice of Israel was purely down to finding a book in the library in the section for holiday jobs. I flicked past the kitbbutzim and moshavs to the Bait Sefer Sadeh field unit school, which looked like the right amount of work for me. I called them from the UK and was told I had to be there to be allocated a place, so I turned up with my backpack assuming I could go to the Red Sea where I would learn to dive and swan around in my bikini in my hours off. As an adult looking back it all sounds utterly ridiculous, but it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. I have to remind myself of that when I hear my own teens talking about their ideas.
The benefit of travelling alone is the intensity of exposure to the world around you. I was forced to interact with the locals; forced to ask them questions and reach out. It was the making of me, and I highly recommend it.
- I learnt that in Israel, my father's fastidious table manners would result in getting nothing to eat; you had to grab quick and speak up or the food would be gone.
- I learnt what it is like to live a precarious existence; in a camp surrounded by barbed wire, with a man in a gun turret, bag searches to go in any shop, and land mines hidden in the mountains all around us.
- I learned how war, and the UN buffer zone, separates entire communities.
- I realised that water is so precious that people will fight to the death to secure a source.
- I realised that money isn’t anywhere near as solid as it had seemed as I watched the people in my community waiting for their wages to drop into their accounts then spending the money immediately before hyper-inflation destroyed its value.
- I rode in vehicles that picked up soldiers along the road, and listened as they exchanged stories of the wounded and dead; many of whom were connected to each other in some way.
- I really felt for the Israelis; particularly the young girl, Tzfia, who befriended me. She had no choice but to do army service because if she didn’t she wouldn’t get a job. She talked of her frustration at growing up in a country that’s constantly at war, in which many would like to make peace. Of course, others were less interested in that.
- I learnt about politics, about religion, how to stand up for myself against a predatory man, the sadness of living in a country that is hated on all sides, the sadness of being a teenager in a country where you have no choice but to go to war and serve.
- I saw places that I had read about in the bible; the Sea of Gallilee, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jerusalem. It was mind-blowing.
I’m so glad that I then spent time living in Jerusalem. There I met Palestinians who were engaged in the first Intifada; a civil uprising in protest at their treatment by the Israelis. We would take eggs, cheese and tomatoes in a little bag, then dip under their shop shutters and join them for dark, grainy coffee to talk politics and eat the meal they would bake for us with the ingredients. I realised how arbitrary life can be, when the hand of history reaches in and uses you as a pawn. There I met strong older women who had no time for my ignorance; who forced me to think more deeply. I also learnt not to leave my passport in my backpack whilst I slept. Thankfully the airline let me home with a crime reference number.
TRAVELLING WITH A FRIEND:
My friend and I flew into India, then travelled across to Nepal to hike in the mountains. I have many, incredible memories of that trip, but on reflection what I learnt was far more about me and the nature of friendship than the country or the people.
- I learnt to negotiate with her over where we would go next; realising that our opinions would differ.
- I decided it was important to choose to stay with your friend when you’re tempted by new paths; but that’s also one of the downsides.
- I also learnt that your partner will have a profound effect on the path you take through life, so choose your partner well.
- This taught me that you better be careful who you travel through life with, because your relationship will divert you and the experience could be positive or negative. Luckily my friend was amazing, and I truly loved being with her.
- I saw what happens to people when they break the law in other countries.
- I learnt about the precariousness of road safety in other countries as our bus flew around winding mountain passes, and peered into gullies with rusting bus carcasses.
- I learnt that if someone has a photo of a good haircut on their wall it doesn’t make them a hairdresser.
- I realised how English I had become, despite living my life feeling like I wasn’t.
- On 34 hour trundling train journeys I discovered that when you have a book you are never bored, but also how infinitesimally small England is on a world scale.
- The key message is that this type of travelling is far less about the country and its people because when you are with someone from a similar cultural background, who tends to interpret the same things as strange, it doesn’t tilt your world anywhere near as much.
WAS IT WORTHWHILE? It was one of the best things I did and has coloured my view of the world ever since. Does it matter if people choose not to take a gap year or do it later? No, absolutely not. I’d say the most important message to my teen is that whatever journey you choose, whether going straight to work, going straight to college, or taking time out to explore other avenues, I want it to be something you actively choose, rather than an acceptance of whatever default position you’re offered.
Make it a leap rather than a gap.
