I pretty much flung myself in to my gap year. No real planning involved, and so far I've just been taking it as it comes. This is not recommended for everyone, or even most people. There have been a ton of headaches as to what to do next, and some opportunities that I could have taken were seized before I could get to them. If you choose this path, you still definitely have a lot of opportunities.
Me after finding a proper internship. Source: Rantchick.com
However, if you want to make life easier, here are a few tips on having a successful gap year. You don't necessarily have to follow these to the point, and you can deliberately ignore these suggestions if they don't apply to what you want to do. Bearing this is in mind,
Tip 1: Think About What You Want to Do
Although this may seem obvious, you may not have a clue in the world as to what you want to do with your gap year. Perhaps you slacked off in high school and did nothing and thus have no immediate interests. Perhaps you have too many interests and cannot decide between the two (I'm assuming that your case is the latter). If you're having a hard time mentally sorting out what you want to do, there's a way of sorting through the muck.
Road trips are always a good idea. Source: freedigitalphotos.net artur84
Write down everything that you want to do in life right now. I mean all the big things that you want to do or pursue, like a painting project, or traveling to different places, or a skill that you want to aquire. You're basically writing a bucket list. Now, with that bucket list, think of all the things that you could probably accomplish this year at this age with this amount of money (or money you could receive), and cross off all the things that you probably couldn't do. For instance, if you put down "Get married", you probably would want to hold that off for a few years assuming you're around my age, and so you would cross that off.After the process of elimination you've probably trimmed most of the fat off. A good list should be one that doesn't give you anxiety to look at. Now that you have a much more digestible list, look up tangible opportunities write them down
Tip 2: Don't Stick to One Idea
If you somehow found your lifelong passion of whatever it is, congratulations, you can skip this one. For the 99% who hasn't found out what makes them tick, try to experiment during your gap year. Do you have a slight notion that organic pomegranate farming would be interesting? Pursue it. Think about it, you have a whole year to make your own. You can do quite a bit if you put your mind to it, and you should think out of the box as well. Was fixing your car/motorcycle/bicycle an enjoyable experience rather than a backbreaking pain in the ass? Go offer to work in a repair shop.
This may be you happily working the pomegranate fields. Source: bigthink.com
This tip also applies to resources as well. Don't expect all of your intern opportunities to come from a single source like InternMatch.com. You may be able to find better and easier to obtain internships on volunteer websites. Non-profits are always looking for people to help out, and aren't as concerned with how bad you are at programming a website as most for-profit companies are. In fact, here is a list of websites I use to find stuff to do:
- www.internmatch.com/
- http://www.volunteermatch.org/
- http://www.craigslist.org/
- http://college.monster.com/
Tip 3: Create a Resume
If you haven't already, do it. It is by far the easiest way to convey your experience and skills to a potential employer or mentor. Although this may seem worthless to the high school graduate, it is crucial to some internships. There are a ton of free awesome free resume makers, and google is your friend here. Also, since you're going to want to tailor your resume to different opportunities, you're going to want to create a base resume with you're skills that can apply to most of what you're doing. Save the advice of resume creation to more experienced people (again, google can be your friend).Tip 4: Get Off Your Ass and Do It
Seriously. If you see an opportunity just go for it. Don't waste your time thinking about whether you will actually get the opportunity, just apply, or talk, or pursue. Often you will catch yourself just idly browsing job websites not applying anything, or looking up trips and not scheduling anything, or looking up organizations and not contacting them. Realize that you're doing it, and then stop it and get your stuff together. Realize that you are spending time looking for stuff to do, and is basically wasting time.
Along the same line is to use all of your resources. Friends, family, people that you talk to that seem interesting are all potential opportunities. Just be as open as possible. You're not being a prick by asking whether or not someone can help you out.
This guy could be the key to your next adventure. Source: http://www.smosh.com/
Finally, here's a good quote that I think about quite a bit to close the article:
"You miss %100 of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
What do you guys think about this advice? Did I leave anything out?
