Quote: (04-22-2016 07:28 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:
What do you guys do in college then? My four years of college were spent drinking, doing all sorts of weird drugs, and banging an endless amounts of women. Almost all of my notches came from easy college sluts. College in America is a giant party especially if you go to a town in a very "blue" city. My junior year I lived in Los Angeles and continued the partying. That was actually a lot of fun, glad I did that but overall the experience was sort of meh. Why take a gap year to do more of the same?
To be honest, I don't look back fondly on those experiences. In fact, I shudder at the thought of reliving those nightmarish days. I wasted time and a lot of money on dead end behaviors that hampered my ability to grow into an adult. It's also one of the reasons I stepped back into the Christian faith and do my best to practice what it preaches. Tis the folly of youth.
The point I guess i'm trying to make is this: there are people out there who because of their connections and activities made in school are ahead because of certain opportunities they took advantage of faster than others. After undergrad I ended up landing a job because of part time work I did in college. This job paid really well and was considered mid level while all of my classmates were doing "entry level" , part time work, or worse had to go to graduate school because they didn't have any relevant to employers.
That first job got me a promotion and a new role in the UK ( with a sponsored visa and relocation package!). I'm 26 and have had some unheard of career experiences because of the hustling I did. Had I goofed off and spent an extra year discovering myself I wouldn't be where I am today.
TL;DR take a gap year at your peril.
College in the UK, Australia most of Europe etc is very similar to the US. Heavy drinking, lots of one night stands and all that. Its great fun, but it is what is - a 'safe' college experience. Spending 6 months in Costa Rica, or 12 months backpacking around SE Asia etc is vastly different. Yes you can drink heavily and have lots of promiscuous sex both in college and while traveling, but they're hugely different environments in every other respect. Experiencing new languages, new cultures, seeing historical/geographic sites, traveling alone or in a small group and dealing with everything (good and bad) that involves and so on are all hugely developmental for a person psychologically/socially. The alternative classic 'gap year' idea that the OP is also thinking of; spending 12 months setting up your own business and attempting to get it off the ground, is even more different to being in college.
It sounds like you're 26 and you're a year or two ahead of your peers because of your lack of time off - which is great. At the start of your career an extra year or two of experience is huge. You might have 3 years of work experience now at 26, where some of your peers only have 1 - which is a massive difference to employers. But the prevailing positive view on gap years in Europe/Australia etc is not so short term. In the long-run, when you're 40, or 50, or 60 years old, that extra year or two of working won't make a huge difference. Once you're talking 20 years work experience vs 18 years work experience, all other things being equal (education/intelligence/social connections/work ethic) there will no longer be a significant career differential. Your peers who took a career break will have caught up with you professionally, but they'll have had a lot more life experience in their 20s while they had the opportunity.
To riposte your TL;DR with my own for both you and the OP: Rushing into the workforce and 40 years of a career means an initial head start over your peers who take gap years, but over time this will regress to the mean. The long term result will likely only be a retirement a year earlier in your late 60s. Is that worth the sacrifice of a quite likely once in a lifetime opportunity of a year of freedom in your mid 20s?
