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Originally Posted by Clodfobble
I'm against the idea of "taking a year off" for its own sake. I know some folks that age still don't have a sense of who they are, and all that, but to me the decision should be more "Am I going to college, or am I going to enter the workforce?" Both of which are completely legitimate goals--but if you feel the need to promise someone that you will go to school after the year is up, that just says to me that you should have been going to college in the first place.
If you have the drive and desire and ability to go to college, why put it off a year? If it's just to learn what it's like to have a job--you can have a job while you go to college. Everyone I know who "took a year off" considers it a wasted year once they're far enough away to look back on it.
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Having a job while in college isn't the same thing as doing nothing but working. The idea is to build yourself up so that when you get out of college, you're not lost then. I see so many people who go straight into college, and once they get out of college, they get lost. They're so afraid that they take the closest job they can find. Some people learn it later on, most don't. Most people are dis-satisfied with the way their life has played out.
If you learn how to be yourself and learn what you want, without the boundaries of school or a degree, then you're one step ahead of everyone else. I'm not saying school is a bad thing, i'm just saying that school has a way of taking away a certain aspect of who you are. I don't see innovators anymore. I don't see the creativity anymore. I see an educational assembly line full of students turned into worker bees. I feel as though taking a year off is a wonderful chance to get out into the real world and understand that there's more options out there for career's, life styles, fortunes,
misfortunes , love, lost, than just what you see in school.
I dunno. Maybe i'm making a big deal out of a small potato. I just felt as though if I didn't take a step back to review my options and goals now, that my whole life would flash before me and all I would be left with is shame, doubt, and regret.
I would also like to point out that when I got out of high school, I wanted to go into networking, because of the money. I was born a cop. Since the beginning of my year off, i've embraced who I really am and feel as though i'm more sure of what I want in life than i've ever been.