“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French writer (1900 – 1944)

For those who aren’t in the know, a “gap year” is where you take a break from college for a while, traditionally for a year. It’s a popular term in Europe, where students postpone their studies in order to travel and find themselves.

Some college students still don’t know what they want to study. As their gen-ed requirements run out, they suddenly feel the increasing pressure to finally choose a direction in which to take their college studies.

I’ll share my own experience. In 2005, I was a freshman at Orange County Community College in Middletown, NY. I picked English as my major. I knew I liked writing, and I wanted to be an author someday (still working on it!). I also had some ideas of teaching English in a foreign country like Japan, so I knew that this education path would help me out in the search for a future job.

But I still wasn’t certain if an English degree was the path I really wanted. I knew i was good at writing, but I wasn’t sure what kind of jobs I would have. I didn’t want to be a Journalist or a permanent English Teacher.

I knew I had to decide someday, but I kept avoiding the topic. It was easier to worry about my homework than worry about my future. “Next time I’ll do some research,” I kept saying to myself. But that “next time” kept getting pushed back later and later.

I got good enough grades during my first year of school, but later on I began to feel stressed out, and my grades reflected that. I wasn’t as interested in my classes as the semesters before, and they were getting harder. At the same time I still had no primary goal for my future English career.

At this time, I didn’t know what I wanted my future to look like, but I was sure I didn’t want to be a person with a four-year degree and a student loan bill, but still no clear idea of what job I would want. I had gone into college barely three months after high school, which wasn’t enough time for me to think about where I wanted my life to go.

So in the fall of 2008, I decided to stop putting off the planning of my future and take some time off.

 

During this year, I took online career tests, checked out career planning books from the library, took an MBTI personality test at my college, talked to my counselors, and really took the time to think about what I wanted to achieve once I finished four years of school. While it felt strange not being in school at first, as the months passed I began to feel more relaxed, more sure of myself. I wished I had done this years ago!

While on my gap year, which slowly extended into two years, I worked at my regular job at Kohl’s, took a job selling knives, delivered take-out meals, enrolled in a martial arts class, joined a few meditation classes, and traveled with friends. It wasn’t as glamorous as backpacking through Europe, but it was still fun.

I was still wondering what kind of job would be perfect for me when suddenly I had a breakthrough.

Reading one of my many career books, I stumbled on a job that seemed perfect for me. Environmental Scientist! Finding new solutions for problems in the environment. It was a growing job field, it was challenging, and it involved a topic I was passionate about, helping the environment and conserving my environmental footprint. It was perfect!

I spoke to a department teacher for advice on taking the new course, and he even let me sit in on one of his physics classes. While I was previously an English major, I wasn’t as intimidated by math as I used to be. With effort, I was able to obtain good grades in my math classes, so I saw no reason why I wouldn’t be able to continue this pattern. Especially with the amazing help of my math tutors at the school.

I was very close to signing up when I encountered an issue. Since I was moving from English and writing to math and science, I would have to do most of my classes over again. I didn’t like the sound of that.

Also, in-between my explorations through the environmental science field, I found another job that was an even better fit for me, and I didn’t have to change majors to do it.

Technical Writer.

A technical writer is a person who takes complicated information that is hard to understand, and synthesizes it for a less educated audience. Technical writers can work in a wide variety of fields, specifically ones that need lots of documentation to explain processes that occur. College textbooks are a great example of the types of products technical writers help create.

Not only did technical writing hit all of my criteria for a job that I would want, I didn’t have to give up on my dream of being a novelist. Since my career would involve writing, I would still be quite close to the writing world, and more likely to network with other potential novelists.

So from that day forward , I set my sails toward a future as a Technical Writer. While waiting for the fall 2010 semester to start, I looked up job opportunities and future colleges I could transfer to. I narrowed down my choices to LaSalle University in PA, D’Youville College in Buffalo, and Farmingdale State College. My gap year period was officially over.

When I came back to school, I did much better in my classes. I was awarded the Dean’s list twice in a row. I finally had a goal and a clear path on how to get there. My conviction towards my future was strong, which my made my classwork, homework, and grades even stronger.

These days, I’ve decided to pursue a career in freelance writing. It’s a slightly different vision than what I previously had planned, but I’m still very happy with it.

If you’re not exactly sure about what you want to do after college, you owe it to yourself to take time off and think about it until you do.