For all you that have come to the solution of a Gap Year to ease the sobering process between carefree college debauchery and the beginning of the ‘real world’, I will let you in on a little secret: the ‘real world’ with sport coats and leather pumps never has to begin.
Now is the best time to get your feet wet, take your Gap Year or take a break from the ‘real world’ (it’s never too late). Jobs are sparse in the U.S., giving recent graduates and young professionals a running disadvantage. You didn’t prep 4+ years in college to be called over-educated and under-experienced. You’re young and you want to get your hands dirty and dive right in to something that inspires you. Don’t let the corporate world suck you in, break your wings and set you at the bottom of the ladder that will become your life.
Now is the time to be daring and try something new. You’ve got your entire life ahead of you to make up for your mistakes. (Oh yes, these will be made, but this is a part of the learning process of life, so embrace them).
So what better way to step out of the shadows than to go somewhere where there aren’t 2,000 of your ex-college buddies vying for the same job with identical resumes, or even worse, younger generations of college graduates being let loose into the workforce to steal your coveted entrance level, assistant brown noser position. There is a world out there where you don’t have to spend hours deciding on the color of paper or font size for your resume in the hope it will distract from your GPA or lack of community service experience.
And if you do it all well, make enough mistakes and develop that rough skin that the real world outside your comfort zone quickly requires, within several years you will continue to think outside the box. You will be inspired by stories of your peers who were able to develop something tangible out of an unstructured, imperfect career path and turn it into a business idea or Gap Year life plan.
So how did I get started? Quite by accident really. Picture the scene from Austin Powers when Michael Myer carefully gears his spaceage golf cart in reverse, turns around in his seat to navigate, hits the gas, and in perfect reversing posture, the cart jolts forward into a wall.
I told anyone who would listen of my plans to move to Spain after graduating college. I even considered paying a company to find me unpaid employment and $400/month housing. But, while my stubborn plans followed me like blinders, fate snuck in through my e-mail inbox, and within a month, off I was to Costa Rica to start my life as a young professional journalist in the rural Guanacaste capital of Liberia.
And there began the flow of bewildered ponderings of friends and family: “Why would you want to live in Africa?”
