Several students come to see me each year with questions about how to productively use their gap year. Here is how you can prepare yourself!
Let’s start with this: a voluntary gap year is a privilege. Sometimes, needing to take time between degrees is a necessity for financial, familial, health, or other reasons. But you can step back into formal education at any time of life! Whether you do or don’t, continued education is only one part of life, and it can be undertaken with or without institutional infrastructure.
That said, sometimes people take gap years to plan out their next steps or to process and recover from a hectic undergraduate degree or several other reasons. If you’ve taken a gap year voluntarily, there are ways in which you can make the most of it. Remember that a gap year is not time you have to waste, but a constructive break that should enable you to elevate yourself in new and exciting ways.
Start by setting your goals. Why are you choosing a gap year and what do you hope to get out of it? Be attentive to your own impulses and agendas. There are, of course, personal goals: eating right, getting disciplined, working on your health and so on. But what do you want to get out of this intellectually also?
The most obvious recommendation people will give you is to travel as far and wide as you can afford. There are also low-budget ways of doing this. It’s a great way to widen your worldview and encounter the melting pot of world cultures of which we are only one small part.
Read. I cannot emphasize this enough. It is not very often in life that you get unstructured time that you can dedicate to this activity. Read as much and as widely as you possibly can. Get a library membership! Even reading for pure pleasure is beneficial in the long run.
Up-skill. This has almost become a marketplace buzzword now, but it has its value. You might look for online or in-person courses that will allow you to develop technical, creative, disciplinary, or inter-personal skills in anticipation of future study or work. Websites like FutureLearn, EdX, Coursera are a good place to start. [They’re where I go when I want to broaden my horizons]. The Indian Ministry of Education has also recently set up the Swayam life-long learning website.
You may want to immerse yourself and learn a new language or pick up vocational skills through study or apprenticeship that can augment your interest or income in the future.
If this feels like the right move for you, you may even consider summer schools in your field of study or even short writing retreats. These tend to be intensive but short-term programs where you get to engage with interesting ideas and like-minded people dedicated to the same subject or activity as you. You may even consider attending a few conferences just to keep your hand in the game.
You may consider volunteering. This is an excellent opportunity to do some good, dedicate yourself to social justice, meet people from different walks of life and with different life experiences, and to learn to recognize your place in the world more intentionally.
You can try an internship or get some work experience; these may be paid or unpaid. This can also be a good way of trying out potential career paths. These tend to be competitive gigs, so choose wisely, apply thoughtfully, and apply early. Even if you choose not to work in the field, you will have gained transferable skills, met new people, and learned something about yourself in the process.
Finally, you may even take this time to do your due diligence on the universities and courses you want to study next. Apply early for both the university and the funding, get in touch with potential supervisors for the coming year, prepare for your entrance tests and interviews.
As always, there is an amount of preparation in advance of a productive gap year so that you find the opportunities you want to pursue during this time. So, start thinking early, talk to friends and family, to on-campus advisors or guidance counsellors. You may even keep an eye on what opportunities are advertised on social media. (I’ve seen internships, work experience opportunities, conference opportunities, calls for research assistants, and so on, just on Instagram and LinkedIn). If you eventually want to return to the same field of study you started with, then your academic mentor is the best person to guide you on opportunities and plans.
Ultimately, there is no singular or right way to do your gap year. The idea is to prioritize the best version of yourself and make the most of it!
To read more about the gap year, see:
An Overthinker’s Guide to Taking a Gap Year, Harvard College
Should You Consider Taking a Gap Year? Harvard College
Dr Ragini Mohite 
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