 Hi everyone, welcome back to today's video. If you are new here, my name is Katie and I talk about gap years a lot because I was on one and I needed a hobby. Okay, so before I get into the topic of the video, I do have a special announcement that I will put a timestamp that you can skip to if you're like, I don't care about this girl's life. I feel you there. Me and my cousin Kelly have started a podcast and it was asked for by no one except us. So our podcast is called Two Gen Z Losers but basically we have had this hobby of talking about bad movies since high school and it's just like our favorite activity. It's our most done activity. Like really that's all we do is we just watch bad movies together. And our first episode is on the 2004 masterpiece, the butterfly effect starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart. So if you wanna go check that out, it's on all the places and I will make a list down below. Okay, jumping right into today's video topic, I have spent some time like reflecting on like the time that I spent on my gap year this year and trying to think of like, like really concrete advice that I can give to you that's like actionable. And I don't really have many regrets from my gap year because obviously this year was, this year was this shit show. I feel like I did the best that I could with it but if I had to redo my gap year and I knew that I wouldn't be traveling and I wouldn't have like an internship or a job. Like if I was like just freshly 18 or like 17, these are definitely the things that I would do to make sure that I like optimize my time during my gap year. And I promise you, this is not gonna be like productivity tips video because I think that actually the joy of taking a gap year is like kind of stepping away from that mindset for a little bit. So let's burn a hop right in. The first thing that I wish I had done on my gap year was I wish that I had scheduled my week. So I had a super weird schedule this year where I basically worked like a nine to five three days a week. And then I had off, you know, the weekend obviously and then Thursday and Friday. And so on those, on Monday through Wednesday, I would basically get up and I would commute like an hour each way. And you know, work downtown, I live in DC, I work downtown. A lot of the times my work, like I would end up pushing it to like the weekend and then like my weekend got all jacked up and like it was just kind of, like kind of just like a scheduling disaster. You know my face mask, I'm filming something else for another video, but also I just wanted to do a face mask. This is what my schedule would look like and I want to do this to, I guess like emphasize how much time you have on a gap year and how if like you don't schedule your time, if you don't have like any structure, I think it can kind of go south quick. Okay, so here's my little schedule. Okay, so first up we have, you guys can't see that. Okay, so first up, my first day, coffee, then what does that say? Morning walk, because you know, we got to get our steps in. Actually, it's just good to get outside for mental health. Also just like to get moving because one thing I definitely underestimated was I worked a desk job and I did YouTube, which are two very sedentary things. So I wish that I had gone on more walks. Then I also added like a mid-afternoon like Skillshare course. I used Skillshare because that's the only thing I could really think of, but it could literally be anything. You can take like online college courses or just like online courses on other places too, but I've just taken Skillshare once because that's what all the YouTubers told me to do. And then I put like some reading time because one of my goals on my gap year, like if I had like to make it up, would be to read like two books a month or more. Maybe I would try to do more if I like didn't have anything to do. And then I scheduled in some time for a dinner with a friend. I'll leave in the rest of the schedule. So like day two, you know, I put like volunteer for a couple hours, try new recipe. On Wednesday I put like a gym session and some time to like work on my hobbies that I've been learning on Skillshare. Then on Thursday I put in like a day trip. And then Friday I wrote like go to a coffee shop, get out of the house. I think that if you're on a gap year and you don't have plans to get out of the house, make plans to get out of the house because this year obviously for obvious reasons I stayed in the house a lot and then schedule in like whatever for Saturday and Sunday like just rest because you can't always be gap-eering. I don't know. Okay, so number two is gonna be goal setting. I recommend still setting goals for your own mental health. And this doesn't have to be anything strenuous. Like it doesn't have to be like I have to learn physics by the time Christmas rolls around. Like no, no, no, no. That could be your goal. But honestly, setting a goal could be like I wanna read two books a month or you know, I wanna get out and walk more or I want to, you know, take some classes and learn about like finances online. And I think that it's a great way to like restructure yourself because definitely a gap year is about like, I think like I think a lot of it is about finding yourself outside of school confines and like the structure of like I'm getting grades. This is how I am going to be successful. And I actually think that that is one of the biggest things that I have gotten from this year. And I just made a video about this but about like the I don't dream of labor trend. And I think that we're very conditioned to like see these like this like roadmap to success. And I think a gap year kind of like deconstructs that a little bit where you can kind of take a step back and be like, okay, when I do have to work for the rest of my life, like what other things about me in my life are going to make me happy? And I think that that can be any type of goal. So, you know, maybe your goal could even be like finding out those things about yourself. Number three is going to be make time for friends. So a harsh reality of a gap year is that like all of your friends will move away and that sometimes they won't. Sometimes your friends will go to state schools and you can like see them. But you know, your state school could be like an hour from where you actually live. I had some friends in online school this year, which really kind of helped me. But that's definitely like a harsh reality that you have to face on your gap year is everyone's going to move away. So if you can, you know, keep up your relationships over, you know, phone calls, facetimes, you know, texting, all that stuff. So you can like get some youth hours. You know, you got to thank your youth hours. But this year for me, just speaking from personal experience, like during the winter, when we weren't really like supposed to see people because of COVID, it was very isolating because I basically was just at home and at work for months on end, where I didn't talk to another person my age, literally ever in person. Like sometimes I would call my friends, but it's just not really the same as like sitting down with them. You just get like a different sort of interaction and like something out of that experience, but also try to make new friends. And I like don't know anybody really who's taken a gap year here. And I don't know how to find other people that like I had no idea how to do that this year. Like how to find other people in my area who like were on a gap year or doing something. I just, I have no idea. So I would have maybe like looked into resources or I wonder if there's any like Facebook groups. I actually have no idea, but that's definitely something you could look into. Or if you wanted to start your own Facebook group, like that could be so cute of you. You could like bring together all the gap year students, you know, in your state and you guys could hang out. You know, that'd be cute. And number five is I wish I had gotten myself dressed more. This might feel like a really silly one, but I wore sweatpants every single day of this whole goddamn year. I wore sweatpants every single day. And it was not cute after a while and that definitely affected my mental health poorly. Like sometimes I get dressed for YouTube and I would feel like so much better about myself. Like instantly, like it was instantaneous, which is like so stupid, but like it's just true. And honestly, like it's a little bit of a weird experience like not putting on jeans for like 10 months and then putting them on again. Like it's just not an experience that I recommend, but keeping up with the fashion trends is just kind of fun and they changed so drastically this year. Like all of my skinny jeans from 2019 are sitting in my closet on a shelf. Now I got all these wide leg pants that I had to figure out how to style and it's guys like I'm having an existential crisis about it, okay? I am because like logically I know that there's like, I look, I know, but like I'm also like, I'm struggling. I'm struggling with, I love the wide leg pants. But like I wish I had had like a year to figure it out and fly in blind. Anyway, thank you so much for watching this video and make sure to check out our podcast down below if you're interested and subscribe I post new videos every Friday and follow me at Instagram and you can follow me on TikTok, but it's a little weird, I'm not gonna lie to you. Okay, I will see you next week. Thanks for watching.