Transcript
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Hello and welcome to teenagers untangled the audio hug for parents going through the teenage years. I'm Rachel Richards parenting coach mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters.
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Now, Suzy, we're going to talk this time about gap years. Did you take a gap year?
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I didn't. And I wish I had interesting I did, but not for the reason most people take gap years. Now you've got a review for us.
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It is lovely. It's called so helpful. 'I've just been listening to your drugs podcast, I've worked in that field. So feel quite confident to have these conversations. But it was so helpful to listen to your take on it. We came back from holiday to messages from my son's friend's parents that they had been doing been smoking joints and doing edibles. glad he's been away and isn't directly involved. But thought it was time to have these chats.
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I thought we'd have a few more years. But they were offered drugs. They're only 13/14 Yikes.
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Well, that just makes us think it's happening younger. And it's never too soon to have these conversations just to forewarn them so that if they get given something, then they think ah, what did my mom say?
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Or maybe or what did my dad say now? This? Yeah.
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Thank you for the review. It's lovely. Yeah, it's
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absolutely brilliant. The nuggets. Shall we have a little talk about nuggets first? Yes.
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So my nugget this week is probably a little bit more conceptual. But it's related to an event, which is that I've just dropped off my eldest at university. Yeah, which is a big deal. Two days ago.
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It's a big deal. And we talked about it in the empty nest syndrome episode.
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Yeah,
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I am there.
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Yes. So how is how is 'there'?
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good. He's not very far away, actually. I think that does make a big difference.
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He's only about an hour away, but won't be popping back all the time. So he's there, we had a lovely build up, and it was all very lovely. And the dropping off was lovely as well, because he came back actually at the weekend, and I dropped him off again. So I'd seen it. But the nugget is this whole idea that I've been practicing very much. And this idea of impermanence of it's very mindfulness based of everything changes, Nothing stays the same.
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And the more we cling, and the more we push away, the harder things are. So this idea of this is a new phase, I still have two children at home. So I'm not completely empty nest, but it does really sow seeds. And it's a big deal. This idea of you know, he's been at home for 18 years, and now he's not and I don't know what it will look like when he's finished. Of course, he will come back and holidays. But nothing stays the same. Everything changes and it's meant to change. He's meant to be going off. And that just is a really positive thing. And there's a grief in it. For me, I'm mourning that. So it's all it's quite a layered thing. But yeah, nihilist is the same, and the more I can embrace that the more organic it feels.
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What a great perspective, and what an important thing to think about because I think when things are good. We want it to stay there.
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You know, the Buddhists talk about the wheel of life and how you know, it's never gonna stay?
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It will change, but it's hard.
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It's hard. Yeah, we can practice it, the letting go is important.
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Yes. And if you've listened to our last episode, you'll have heard me dedicate it to my lovely friend, Sophie and I was talking with her last week about some of the messages she's been getting for her Book of Memories. And one of them. So this is this is memories that her friends have of her little special moments, photos, or when they say I remember you doing this. And it brings the person to full life.
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Because when we're moms quite often, they only see that little segment of your life, but your life is so much bigger. And we're getting some fantastic stories in. One mother had written that she'd never forgotten Sophie's kindness when she had felt isolated by a clique at school and ended up sitting alone at a sports fixture. Sophie had deliberately gone to sit with her and chat despite the fact that she knew all the other people and could easily have joined them. Now, what's interesting about it is that Sophie had completely forgotten doing this. And I wanted to mention it because it reminded me that sometimes for us, these little gestures don't really take anything out of our time or our day or they're just kind of meaningless in a way but for somebody else, when we reach out and we do something like that it can have a lifelong impact. And I thought what a wonderful thing to
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dwell on. That's really beautiful, as I call it, the ripple effect. Yeah, really, really powerful. Yes,
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So when we say gap year, it kind of implies a absolutely.
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void thinking about the word gap. Yeah, it's It's weird, isn't it? Because it implies, nothing's happening. But in actual fact, it could be monumental things happening. So I think it should be called a personal development year. Yeah.
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Or restoration. Yeah, yeah, they
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Yeah, then they might not do it.
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So you didn't do it.
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But the real one, well, one of the main reason it was never really a thing that I thought about doing because I'm a musician, and I was going to music college and I'd got my place at music college. I think some people did take a gap year I learned later, but it was really unusual because for me doing a gap year would have meant traveling I would want I would have wanted to travel. And I would have, but I needed to be practicing my instrument. It's kind of hard with an instrument, you can't just take, you know, weeks off. So for me, that wasn't a thing. I tried to nudge my eldest to take one but he didn't want to, which is also fine.
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It's really interesting. You mentioned that because one of the downsides that I did read about is that if you're trying to do kind of some of the hard sciences like physics, maths, they there has been a warning that you could go off the boil that you will lose some of that knowledge and momentum. And it can be much harder to go in and do the course. But you know, that's just one of the things. Exactly.
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So I took a gap year, and I'm older than you, but it just wasn't really a thing when I was young, partly because I was at a local college, where it just seemed like an extreme indulgence. And nobody I knew really was doing that. What happened for me was I got way better results than I had expected. And it then made me think, well, maybe I'll just apply to a better university.
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Okay, which then prompted taking a year out. Now, I wasn't even living at home at that point. So there was nobody I had to negotiate with to do this. I was already earning money, albeit not particularly great money. So at that time, you could go into temp agencies. And I looked at what the options were. And I'd seen a picture in a magazine of Nepal. And I thought I would go there. I didn't know where it was. Yeah, that looks fine.
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That'll be easy. And a friend of mine, found out I was going and she had taken a year off. I don't know why. But she was going to Oxford. And I said should we go together then I thought Yeah. So I was then left with a gap because she had to earn some money. And I was living away from home. So I was spending money as well as trying to save it. And I thought I was going to have to wait until January when she would be ready.
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So I thought, well, I might just do something in the meantime, and I found out in Israel, you could get paid. Oh, yeah. Didn't know where that was either and I didn't know any of the history.
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I was just incredibly ignorant, which made it very easy. And I found out about something called baet sefer sadeh which are these field schools for the protection of nature all over Israel. So I turned up in Israel because they said we can't book you ahead of time, and walked into the office and said, I'd really like to go to the Red Sea. I've seen you've got one there and I imagined myself in a bikini at the Red Sea living it large. They said, Yeah, we've only got one slot.
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And I said, oh, so not the Red Sea. No, not the Red Sea. And I said, Well, where is it? And they said, it's in the Golan Heights, and they got out a map and I went, Wait a second. Even in my ignorance. I knew there was war. Lebanon, Lebanon Syria problem. Yeah. And it was right up by the UN buffer zone. And I just thought, I don't know. But I had no choice. So I said, Yeah, all right. So off I went on this bus; turned up in the middle of the night. And that was a baptism of fire. We were in an encampment with rolled barbed wire around it, a man in a gun turret and the all the area around it - You just couldn't walk wherever you wanted, because there were landmines that were clearly marked out. Yeah.
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It not really backpacking around Bali. Is it?
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No,
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But I loved it.
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I thought it was amazing. And I only met Israelis. I learned so much. Yeah. And then I moved to Jerusalem. And I met Palestinians. And I can't stress enough how life changing this event was. I went around India and Nepal as well, and they were amazing too, but actually this particular experience on my own in these environments was incredible. I went from reading Thomas Hardy and Shakespeare to reading American literature and Russian literature and all these other things, completely changed my life. changed them. I got to university and switch from English to doing Politics and International Relations. Wow. It really really had a massive impact. So my point is, it can be really life changing in a very interesting way.
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Yeah, I don't doubt it.
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And I'm glad.
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Yeah, very glad I did that. So
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that just just emphasizes that what I already believed, and it's can be life changing.
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Yes. but as a parent, if your kid came to you and said, so I'm planning...
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I tried to nudge him to do it. And he was like, No, I don't want to.
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But the things we imagined - like them wandering around Bali, which looks lovely, but you don't imagine them being by a UN buffer zone No. So
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the whole idea of traveling wherever you go, the whole the life experience that you need to do that can be really valuable
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drawing on so many skills or having to make lots of decisions. It's a really extraordinary thing. So when do we do it? Before uni? That gives you time to pause, regroup, getting some more maturity, or all these things. And there are lots of schools now that accept students deferring admission for a year, they might request a proposal for how you plan to spend your gap year so be prepared for that. There's during uni now, this is one that I think is a bit more controversial. And I say that just because i got to the end of my second year, and I sat with my tutor and said, I think I'm going to take a year out, because I was terrified. And he And after university, you know, a sabbatical can also help just looked at me, he said, that is not a good idea. Because we find people do far better if they stay with their cohort.
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Socially. Yes, yes, of course.
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And he was right. I was just scared. Yeah. But it can offer relief from academic burnout. So when kids are at university, if things aren't going well, it can be really helpful. Although student loans could end up being an issue, though, so that's very important to understand.
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people who before you go into work or working professionals.
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Now my bonus daughter, who's in her 20s is planning a gap year now. She had one but she didn't really do much with it before University. So now she's making money, she's proved herself in the workplace. And she's got an idea for a business that she wants to try out. Which also involves traveling, so she's now planning it, brilliant idea in her mid 20s. So the point is, life has changed, people are no longer rigidly held into one career, and this is what you've got to do for the rest of your life.
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Isn't it a fear of this kind of idea that you're going to run out of time, you've got to do everything now. And this, this whole concept that we you know, you'll be left behind sort of FOMO in the workplace.
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And I think that's rubbish, we have so much time in our 20s It was so much time, it's really like the experiences you. But the learning you get from doing different things, you know, you're never going to not use.
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And if you think about the way that people talk about, again, this is quite Buddhist, it's not it's not the getting there, because when you get somewhere, then you are looking for the next goal, it's actually the journey. It's the way you grow and what you experience in life.
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And that's a way of looking at your whole life.
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We're gonna go down that route.
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We're always trying to get to the next bit. So you know, well, how about the bit you're doing right now? When you mentioned your gap year, when I was sort of that age, people looked down upon gap years, it was a bit of a, you know, beach bumb, you're not going to do anything, but you can do so many valuable things. You can volunteer, you can do some really life changing really worthwhile things.
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I agree. And the benefits of a gap year are things like personal growth. And many Gap Year participants returned to their studies or jobs feeling a lot more inspired and engaged and focused, this can really help with that new perspective. It completely opened up my my, my life and my world and my perspectives. And having international immersion.
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I mean, if you are trying to learn a language, the best thing to do is be in that country.
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Yes. Really. More interesting stories for employers. Okay, so when you're trying to apply for a job, it's actually a narrative like what is the story of my life? Who am I? And how do I pull that all together? You don't have to follow one person's path or another's it's What are you saying about why you're doing the things?
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Its' what you're doing and confidence you get from just traveling or if that's what you choose to do or working or whatever it is. It's really valuable,
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and a gap year can also improve your academic life. performance by giving you more of a sense of purpose. You can begin to know what you're trying to aim for. Because a lot of kids, they'll sort of follow the academic path. But there's a there's a niggling feeling like, what is this all for?
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And am I doing the right thing? Do I really want to be doing this? Am I just doing it? Because my mates do it?
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Yeah, exactly.
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There are drawbacks to a gap year. So you mentioned that this kind of feeling of falling behind, but also the expense. We can't go without mentioning that. The truth is, though, I had no money coming from anybody but myself, you can find jobs to save money. It was grueling when I got back paying off credit card bills that I'd built up, but I did it.
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And most people, you know, they work and then they spend what they've earned. And it's doable.
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You can do working holidays as well. There are other options. Actually, I'll just mention right now there's a man who decided to go and work in Japan, as a teacher, as a gap, you know, because he could make some money and didn't really know Japan that well. And he's ended up with his own YouTube channel. He's still there. 10 years later, and he's making a massive success of it's called Abroad in Japan. And he writes for The Sunday Times, he's this YouTuber who's making a lot of money. And all he did was while he was out there, he started sort of creating videos about Japanese culture, and the Japanese started liking it as well. And this is the thing. You can kind of you evolve. And then who knows?
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That's really funny, because I have my eldest who had a bit of a funny old a level pass. He's gone to university, which is amazing, because that's what he wants to do. But we didn't know if that was how it was going to end. And he he's really keen on Japan. And we went there very briefly. And I was saying, Why don't you, you know, go to Japan? And it hadn't worked out? Maybe he would have been doing that in teaching or doing something like that, which would have been amazing.
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Other research has shown that 90% of gap year participants surveyed returned to their studies within a year.
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But that means 10% don't. Yeah, but is that a downside, though?
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Not necessarily.
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Maybe
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they decided that wasn't for them. Maybe they're in Japan making a lot of money out there. And you've already mentioned that the knowledge loss can be an issue.
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It depends on what you're trying to study. But losing that momentum, if you will. So for example, my one of my daughters is learning Greek and Latin. And these are these are really intensive, vocab, heavy subjects. And coming away from that could mean that she would lose a lot of the momentum she's Exactly. And the truth is, I came back from
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However, I do think if you really want to do built.
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my gap year, absolutely thrilled to be at university. I was so something, if you're really excited about learning, you will excited because I thought I'm going to meet all these really pick it up again.
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intellectual people. Yeah. And I didn't. I was not what I expected. I thought I'd be sitting around pontificating about really important things.
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And everyone was in the bar And there's also stress, kids can have homesickness, there's a getting pissed.
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culture shock. You know, there were other things where they may think that this is what they want. I know of someone whose daughter called up crying, saying, she was not ready for the major change in you know, she was used to staying in nice hotels, and then you staying and I was fine with that. I was fine with staying in horrible little place.
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Not a reason not to do something, is it? We don't know. That's just life flexibility. And it was just no thought I wanted to do that. And I don't so I'm changing my mind.
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Exactly. What I thought was interesting is I saw teaching abroad, some stats they put it in said that in an estimated 83% of gap year takers actually worked in Britain. And 16% worked or volunteered abroad. And one in five young people rely on the bank of mum and dad to fund their gap year.
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Not my kids know, I've told them already. Guys, you want to take a gap year you can fund it yourself.
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That's surprising. I was saying that don't get a job.
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And then they travel if that's what they want to do. Or they
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Yeah, yeah.
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Anyway, the most important thing, I think, is choosing a goal. So if you're going to do a gap year, why? And I guess the question is, if you don't know why you want to do a gap year, then maybe that's, you know, just continue with education even not burnt out. I think the sheer volume of options can be overwhelming. So this is part of the problem of deciding about what you're going to do with the gap here. And I think the sooner people start thinking about this, the better it is. So my kids have been talking about gap yourself for a long time and I've always said don't take one unless you know what you want to do with it. So how do you structure a gap year? Do research and planning early Pinterest board? Get you know, what do you feel or think about that? As what are your dreams.
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And it can be anything from doing a job where you think I really want to do that job, actually do I know what that job entails, and going in and doing some workplace experience going and working for a charity. So you'd learn a bit of gratitude, all those things, right? So your goals could be either personal development, or they could be linked to a country or an activity. So it's worth checking whether there are entry requirements for some of those countries, you might want to go in live or work in, you know, what seasonal weather conditions there are, because these things ahead of time will help you because if you hadn't thought about this stuff, you might think, Oh, I'm gonna go such and such a place. And then you find out that's monsoon season. So this is why it's useful to kind of think about this stuff ahead of time. and plan your itinerary with a degree of flexibility, which I did, we kind of had an idea of what we were going to do. And then we just met other people and moved around to different places, like what's interesting, and other people told us decide who you're going to travel with, if you're going to travel, is it because this actually does make a difference?
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It can make you stop you from feeling lonely, you can share the cost of things, you can be safer, but at the same time if you go alone, or you're not being held back by other people, their different budgets, their expectations, and also what I found was when I was with my friend, I was much less inclined to reach out to the locals.
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Yeah. And and we relied on each other. Yeah. So that's the downside. And I really felt that made a difference. Because when I was on my own, I really had to just go to dinner parties with people that were locals different. Yeah. You much more exposed? It is it's a much more extreme experience. Yeah, it might be maybe better or worse, I don't know.
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It depends on who you are as an individual. I'm just sitting here thinking, I lived in Denmark for years. And they tend to massive generalization. And I haven't lived there for years. So I but I think it's still the same.
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People genuinely go to university later, they finish school a tiny bit later, they start later, and they finish a bit later. And they go to university a bit later. And having a gap year or gap years, is completely normal. And it's much more sort of seen as a sort of not a rite of passage, because not everybody does it.
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But it's seen, it's really kind of cherished, and it's a it's a kind of growing up thing, you do things and you grow up with it.
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And then when you study, if you decide to do that way, you're kind of more ready for it. And there's not, I'm just kind of reflecting as you're talking like we have you have a year, make the rest of it, you know, whereas there it's like, Oh, you gotta Yeah, you might want to talk to you know, when what do you want to do interesting, there's a lot more fluidity around it. And then maybe they you know, they start their careers a lot later, but you know, there's loads of time, guys. Yeah.
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I it's just like, how are you going to live in the meantime? I guess?
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Yeah. But they work?
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Yeah, no, yeah. No, yeah.
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I love that.
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And my friend who I traveled with had actually spent a year working in a filling station before she did her a levels, and then thought she don't like that. I think I need to study and ended up at Oxford
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a great lesson, right? We have this fear that you're going to run out of time, and I don't think we
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know. Yes, so it's sort of stepping outside, but you're not going to get lost. The problem is some people do the Warriors. If you if you don't have goals, you don't have momentum. So sometimes, it can just feel like falling off a cliff a bit. If your friends have gone off to college, or they're planning, they're having a holiday during the summer, and then they're going to do something and you haven't got anything planned. And I talked about this on Instagram, actually, this young man who was a bit he was just playing on his Xbox all the time. And I said, Well, it sounds like he's diverting his his feelings, because, you know, where are his friends? Yeah, or that
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it feels like a huge effort to actually apply to the course that you actually really want to do. Because now you've been traveling or working for a while. It's, I can't really be bothered. And then maybe you regret that later. But yeah.
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So it's, we can as parents, we can just talk this through and just say, you know, just check in with them and make sure that they're not just suddenly dropping off a cliff. Yeah. Because I think the momentum sometimes isn't there.
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Yes.
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No, you're absolutely right. It's both.
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Yeah.
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You can work abroad teaching English as I mentioned, working as an Au Pair live in nanny hospitality industry needs a lot of people, you know, they're learning languages is focusing on sports.
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So if you're really good at sports, there are lots of kids who this is their dream, and there's nothing wrong with them spending a bit of time going out or acting, you know, exploring that and then saying, Okay, I'm just parking my education, you know, finish one bit of your education pocket and then know that it's still there. You know, you haven't lost it completely.
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If you don't go down that route.
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That's, I think you're so right.
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We ended up thinking if I don't continue down this route, I will be lost. Yeah, it's not true.
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All the parents are thinking that make the Yes.
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And you know, we Explore future career path internships, resting and recharging. 35% of respondents to the gap year Association survey cited burnout as a prime motivator for choosing a time to take time off. Planning for your return. That's the other thing like you need a flight home for Yeah, yeah. And you need to be able to update your CV with so if you're doing a gap year, so what have I learned from this and it doesn't need to be the old boring stuff that people put on their CV is it can be something personal development is just as important. More employment. Exactly. It's so competitive. So you can put it on your CV and it makes it interesting. But yeah, keep that keep looking notes of things and have something lined up for when you get home because you can end up with a bit of a crash, you know, you've been traveling, it's been amazing. And you get back to England and it's gray or your wherever else you live.
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And, and you know, you don't none of your friends are around and it can feel very isolating and hard. So that's one of the things to sort of think about.
00:25:59.940 --> 00:26:02.910
And again, that's part of the experience isn't isn't
00:26:02.940 --> 00:26:18.180
this woman I read about Rhiannon Dwyer said she wasted a lot of time just going with the flow in her year off and she looking back wishes she had pushed herself a little harder. She says she's happy that she took the time off, but she really thinks she could have done a lot more with it.
00:26:18.210 --> 00:26:28.529
Yeah. And maybe 18 some of them aren't some maybe I wouldn't have been as well, like mature enough to to make the best of the time. And maybe after if University is your bag.
00:26:28.920 --> 00:26:32.339
Maybe after is a better time.
00:26:28.920 --> 00:26:42.660
You know, there's lots of times oh, I have a friend actually who did a? We wouldn't call it a gabbiani she's probably too old to call it get me now. That took a year sabbatical from the job.
00:26:39.269 --> 00:26:42.869
Yes. And traveled around the world,
00:26:43.049 --> 00:26:56.339
which is brilliant. And we mentioned before the lady I saw on Twitter who, whose child had gone to university and she went interrailing Mason because she'd never done it. How cool is that?
00:26:52.589 --> 00:27:30.930
So the other thing to do is just double check if you're going to university, your plans University, just check in with them before you do any of this, like what is their attitude towards this because some of them actually like this. Some of them particularly like I said medicine, physics, maths, some of these courses, the tutors worry, you'll go off the boil, you'll come back to college and you will be struggling to get back into to that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. But it means engage with them beforehand and think okay, how am I going to manage this? Yeah, and how am I going to manage this? If that's your? If that's because you can do stuff? Yeah, doesn't mean you can't do some prep work.
00:27:31.769 --> 00:27:39.029
Got your deferred place? Offer. If you get one, then you know, as long as you get the grades, then then then it's fine.
00:27:39.059 --> 00:27:42.869
It's in, it's in the bag. So you know, you've got something to come back to you don't need to worry Yeah.
00:27:43.079 --> 00:28:22.559
And you might be asked to prove how you're, you know, you continue to develop your skills and subject knowledge during your year out. So it's just just checking. So thinking ahead to Okay, here's where I'm thinking of going, here's the courses I'm thinking of doing, why don't I just look at the institutions and think, because you will. The other great thing that I haven't mentioned is if it's highly competitive course, bear in mind that you will now have your grades. So you are in a better position, possibly than someone who hasn't got their grades. And you're more mature. Yeah. And you're able to say you don't have to bet on me, you'll know what I'm getting. Yeah, absolutely. And like in my situation, I got better grades.
00:28:22.799 --> 00:28:34.859
Or you could take some time do you know a six months improve my a level grades to get into a better course if that's what I wanted to do. There are all sorts of options. Yeah. And include some trouble with that.
00:28:34.890 --> 00:28:42.390
Yeah, I think socially as well. You often hear from the people who've taken a gap year they hang out together because it probably a bit more mature
00:28:42.779 --> 00:28:44.400
that centuries.
00:28:45.779 --> 00:28:50.220
It's it's inevitable, isn't it? You go off and do something for a year?
00:28:47.819 --> 00:29:03.750
Yes, you're going to be more mature, not just because you're a year older, but because of what you've experienced. So yeah, it's different. It's loads of advantages. But it's not for everybody. Not everyone wants to do that. No, no, but there's never too late. It's never ever too late. A friend will vouch for that. So Susie, are
00:29:03.750 --> 00:29:04.710
you ready for your gap year?
00:29:05.009 --> 00:29:08.730
Do you know what?
00:29:05.009 --> 00:29:13.259
When all my kids have left home, we me and my partner are going to do some fun things. Maybe we will see that.
00:29:13.739 --> 00:29:24.868
Yeah, so she will be doing this podcast from somewhere. Exotic. Yeah.
00:29:17.308 --> 00:29:29.038
Brilliant. I love it. Yeah, no, I know you're not. Have you found this program useful?
00:29:29.038 --> 00:29:56.308
Please follow us so you don't miss an episode, tell your friends. And you could even leave a review. I've I've put a bit more information on the blog to complement this podcast. And you can find it at www.teenagersuntangled.com where you can message us search all of our past episodes for any particular subject that interests you. And we're always interested in your questions. So do keep them coming. I even had one coming in from LinkedIn the other day, which was a new one.
00:29:56.368 --> 00:29:59.068
You love it. Susie can be contacted on
00:29:59.220 --> 00:30:03.779
WWE W dot a mindful hyphen life.co.uk.
00:30:04.170 --> 00:30:14.549
Ask her any question, any question any question and she is she can help you with calming your nervous system. She can deal with specifics or she can deal with just general
00:30:14.730 --> 00:30:23.609
parenting things or just general you know, regulation mindfulness things, therapy, whatever. And you can book a free chat on my website if you so wish.
00:30:23.640 --> 00:30:31.619
Imagine. That's it for now, my fellow on tanglers And don't forget your great parent doing your best with what you've got. Bye for now.
