7 Reasons Millennials are Taking a Gap

7 Reasons Millennials Are Taking A Gap Year

Some insight into why gap years are becoming a growing trend for Millennials.

By Sarah Clayton

1. Our brains need a break.

It’s no surprise we can’t wait to graduate and do something besides school. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, students are now spending an extra 2 hours per week in the classroom than they were in the 80s. It may not seem like much, but there are about 40 weeks of school time each year, meaning an extra 80 hours of in class time that students are now experiencing every year. This doesn’t even include time outside of the classroom for studying.

The documentary film Race to Nowhere (2010) shows how it’s becoming the norm that students are burnt out and “arrive at college and the workplace unprepared and uninspired.” The filmakers chose to explore this topic when a student in their community committed suicide after getting a bad math grade. At what point do we admit that the costs are outweighing the benefits of the increased time and pressure of school? We’ve been at this whole education thing since pre-K. After 4 years in college, that adds up to about 18 years of school. If you work out the math, we’ve been cramming random facts, difficult math problems, languages, and other crap into our brains for 41,760 hours of our lives. We really need a brain break.

2. We grew up multitaskers.

A study by McMahon and Pospisil (2005) links our multitasking habits to our busy lifestyles. They found evidence of this in our need to bring our laptops everywhere just in case we have a spare moment to work on something. I’m guilty of this and so is my roommate. She even takes her laptop to hair appointments when subconsciously she knows she isn’t going to use it. I think it makes us feel like at least we tried to catch-up on work. This idea has been ingrained in us since birth. Our generation was the first to have the internet at our fingertips and cell phones permanently attached to our hands. We were forced to develop skills that allowed us to text, listen to music, and be engaged in a conversation with mom all at the same time.

How does this relate to why we want to gap? Besides the fact that it would give us a moment to slow down and experience something new, we know that we have the capability of doing this AND having a career or going back to school the following year. Our multitasking skills are second nature like a cat landing on its feet. So I can go be an Au Pair in Spain for 3 months and keep up on medical school applications and interviews because I already know how to juggle multiple tasks at one time. This is something our parents don’t necessarily understand. How many times have you tried to have a conversation with your mom only to realize she’s been texting and hasn’t heard a word you said? Literally all the time. Our parents just don’t know how to multitask as well and fear that we won’t focus on going back to school or starting our careers while we simultaneously take a break from formal education.

3. Millennials value self-growth.

According to Pope et. al (2013), individual growth is a motivating factor for Millennials who study abroad. I think the same finding can be applied to gap years. Sure, it’s cliche to say we need to “find ourselves,” but it’s almost the best description of what we’re looking for. While it is true that we get tons of development in school, it’s not true that we can explore all of our passions in school. There’s no time between classes, work, projects, and all those resume boosters for exploring that passion of baking. Taking time off of formal education can give you the opportunity to learn new (*and practical) skills.

Take culinary classes, or photography lessons, do both. Studies like the one by Bourke and Mechler (2010) are calling Millennials a new “Me generation” similar to the Baby Boomers (our grandparents) because of our self-growth interests. People think we’re stuck up and only interested in helping ourselves, but I think it’s an unfair assessment because it doesn’t look at the ways we are helping ourselves. Yes, we’re interested in being better. Yes, we’re interested in boosting our resumes. Yes, we’re interested in living in the moment and doing all we can for our own experiences. But, we do these things by interacting with others, supporting each other, and making an impact on the world. Gap Years are considered wasted by admissions officers if you only sit on your couch. You have to get out and do something worth while to make it count. We do this to enrich our own lives through new cultures, new people, and new experiences like sky-diving or entrepreneurship. So no, we’re not stuck up and self-absorbed; we’re self-interested and want to find our passions and explore them so that we understand ourselves in the context of the world and the 7 billion other people in it.

* I'm sorry Math 116, but knowing how to do differential equations is not practical to my life.

4. Traveling is easier nowadays.

Before the internet, you actually had to get in touch with a travel agent just to book a flight. I’m embarrassed to say I had to ask my mom how that worked pre-1990s. We can go online and compare hundreds of different sites for the best deal on flights, accommodations, and attractions. Besides that, hotels aren’t the only option for places to sleep anymore. Sites like Airbnb are changing the way we travel so we don’t have to pay $150 a night at a hotel anymore. You can book a flight the day of and be on a new continent the next day. It’s literally as easy as clicking a button.

So why wouldn’t we take advantage of that? There’s great deals out there for students and recent grads that can be found on sites like statravel. The internet also gave us wanderlust. Pictures of beautiful places, articles on the 15 places to see before you die, snapchats from all over the world with interesting people and events. How can you expect us to say, “that’s nice, but I’m fine in my tiny corner of the world.” I mean, some people are and that’s great, but for the majority of us, we have to get out of here at least for a little while.

5. The recession.

When the housing bubble popped and the recession hit, we were at a vulnerable age. Most of us were between middle school and college or just graduated and felt the effects of the recession while we were just learning how to manage money. We watched our parents lose a lot of what they had worked hard for. We watched our grandparents work longer than expected because social security wasn’t so secure anymore. Even those more fortunate Millennials who weren’t faced with as much loss likely felt the effects as our parents became more frugal and conscious about where we spent money. Now that things are recovering, we see our opportunity.

We have experienced that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed and I think we’re afraid if we don’t go now, when will we? When we have a family? Certainly not, because we’ll have to work hard to make sure we are saving for who knows what might happen. When we’re retired? Definitely not, because social security might not even be a thing in 40 years and we’ll need our retirement funds to support the final years of our lives and that might not include travel the way we imagined it when we were 20 years old.

6. Our lives feel predictable.

Our parents want the best for us; we get that. And, while higher education is still expensive and not necessarily a given for some, it has become part of the path to adulthood. According to www.howtoedu.org, average college grads will make almost $1 million more dollars over their lifetime than high school grads and doctoral grads will make almost $1 million more than those college grads. So it’s sort of expected that college comes after high school now.

College used to be a place where people - especially women - went to become educated, not to get a degree so you could get a job to work the rest of your life and then die. Now, that’s exactly what it’s for. You basically have to go to college in order to have a chance at middle class so that you can work in a job that doesn’t give you enough benefits and can’t guarantee a pension so you can penny pinch for retirement, have some kids, put them through college so they can do the same thing, get old, and die. I think that thought scares some of us. It’s like our whole lives are predictable now - high school, college, maybe some grad school, get a job, retire, die. We don’t want that; we want so much more than that.

7. Diversity and Openness.

We’re the most diverse generation to ever hit the United States. NPR attributes this to the increase in Hispanic and Asian immigrants over the last half-century. We also are coming of age in a world where sexual orientation, abortion, and other hotly contested issues are center stage and being fought fiercely to end stigmatization and hate. You could almost say we’re back in the 70s, with weed and gay marriage being legalized, we’re all about love and peace. You could say Millennials are starting to change the conversation from “mind your own” to “support each other.” I know my mom’s group of friends have always loved to talk gossip, but never were really about openly talking about personal issues. I think our generation, thankfully, is flipping that norm. Unfortunately, our parents sometimes think of this as our generations weakness - that we’re creating wimps because we’re standing up for the bullied and penalizing the bullies. They grew up in an age where if someone kicks you, you kick them back. For better or worse, we’re not really in that age anymore. I like to think of it like this: our parent’s generation were Band-Aid Babies; They solved their problems by dealing with the fallout. In other words, they didn’t look to fix the cause of the problem, they just dealt with patching up the effects aka put a band aid on and waited for it to heal. Our generation is more about finding the root of the problem and solving that. Bullies? Well let’s start a Bully Buster campaign. Don’t kick him back, teach them why bullying is wrong so the kicking stops altogether.

Again, what does this have to do with gapping? We actually WANT to experience the way others live. We grew up knowing that everybody is unique and that’s a good thing. We embrace the differences we see in each other and want to understand them. I’ve never lived in another country, but I’ve heard that once you do it - immerse yourself in a culture for a few weeks - your grow and change because you tried something new and saw how the other side lives. I know it makes me extremely stressed that I might live my whole life in this bubble that is middle class America and not see the world and meet people who have no idea how baseball is played.