Spaces And Exchanged

SPACES AND EXCHANGES

How can a gap year be a fulfilling experience ?

Introduction

The notion I’m going to deal with is spaces and exchanges. It’s about the geographical and symbolic areas that all societies occupy and the interactions between men and different societies. Traveling is a way to discover others countries, cultures or ways of life. It gives you the opportunity to make your own vision of the world even to shape your personality. Then we may wonder how can a gap year be a fulfilling experience ? My presentation falls in two parts illustrated by two documents studied in class. Both are article, the first one is entitled « Postcard from the edge » and the second one « The big issue : mind the gap year ».

Development

A gap year is a study break between high school and university or after university and before professional life. During a gap year you can go abroad and find a job for example or you can just relax for some time. You can even work for a charity, to sum up : your are free to do whatever you want. Gap years are mainstream among British students as Jennifer Davies. The article « Postcard form the edge » from the newspaper « The guardian » and published in 2008 deals with Jennifer’s gap year. She spend it on a remote village of the Canadian Arctic Circle named Aklavik. There she helped out at the local school as a teaching assistant and even tutored one girl who was late compared to other children. She found an other aspect of the inuit community as the high level of unemployment which leads lot of people to turn to alcohol and drugs. She learned about their way of life but moreover about herself, she says that she learned to more versatile and resilient, that it opened her eyes about the fact that there’s bigger problems that she thought. She even found an other career path, indeed she switch her law studies for medicine’s ones. We can link this document with the problematic context because Jennifer’s gap year had a big impact on her, it changed her and gave her an other vison of the life.

On an other hand gap years can have different aspects. They can be fulfilling experiences, an asset on a CV, rewarding. You can learn to master languages and broaden your horizons. But a gap year can be a danger for the gapper. This is chat the article « The big issue : mind the gap year » from The Irish independent published in 2008 talks about, the assets and the drawbacks of the gap year. The positive aspects are that it is positively seen by employers, there is a lot of well-organized charities, it gives young people maturity and offers them some independence. The negative aspect is that it could only be a doss year, a big holiday. Indeed, some gappers don’t want to go back to college, it becomes a fashion and sometimes programs are not benefit for the local population. Then some advices for gappers are given too, like to check if he organization is reliable, to be careful with voluntarism which can be harmful for the local population. We can link this document to the problematic context because it shows that a gap year can definitely be a fulfilling experience if the gapper is careful, aware that it will only last one year and be honest with his intentions.

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