 Most likely it's because you aren't doing enough, which I know is like so the opposite of what you want to hear. Hi everybody, welcome to today's video. So what if your gap year sucks? And I've done videos like this before, but like I feel like this one is going to be a little bit more like sassy Katie, like I'm coming at you. I'm coming for your throats. And you may not like it, but I found this Reddit. Okay, so I'm gonna go back. So like I get comments a lot on my YouTube channel. And a lot of people say like, Oh, I took a gap year is like the best thing of my whole life. Like I love it so much. And then some people get on my channel like Katie, like my gap year sucked so bad. I hated my whole entire life. Everything went up in flames. I didn't do anything. And I hate myself. And I'm like, I, I'm first of all, I'm so sorry. Second of all, so I looked up a Reddit thread talking like about people talking about how like they hated their gap years. And I have found that a lot of people have like very similar problems when it comes to taking a gap year. The start of the thread says from two years ago on Reddit, it says anyone else hate their gap year pros, I'm making decent money. I have free time. I am doing a load of lifting cons. No one my age lives in the middle of nowhere town. I'm so bored. First of all, this is a comment that I get all the time. And it's such a strange one to get but it is real. People comment a lot and they're like, I feel like I'm just wasting my life. I have no friends in my town. I'm not doing anything. My job sucks. And I'm gaining weight. I'm gaining weight. Hi, everybody editing Katie. So I just want to jump in here and just say, do like, I feel like this part of the video was very abrupt. But I just wanted to say that I was reading through this Reddit thread and a lot of it was just talking about weight and body image and lifting. And I get that comment a lot on my channel and it's something that is personal to me because, you know, on my gap year, I didn't have a lot to do. And it was during the pandemics, we were all dealing with like mental health issues. And I think that very easily you can take it out on your body. So this part of the video was really just to say like, if you're struggling with that and you're focusing all of your weight into what your body looks like, or you're not taking care of yourself, I mean, I think that a gap year is a good opportunity to learn how to balance yourself out a little bit. So, you know, if you're going into your lifting like six days a week, you know, that may not be the most sustainable lifestyle for you in the long run. So, and especially if it's like taking over your whole entire mind, I guess my whole point in saying that was that if that's all you're focusing on and it's just like a way to get your frustration out, I would just say, you know, try some other things, try to get a creative outlet, try to, you know, find a job you really love. I'm going to talk about all this in the video as well. But and then if you're worried about the other end of that, you know, we all have a different relationship with our body and a gap year can be a really good time to sort of figure out that kind of stuff and you're faced with a lot of like existential anxiety, which a lot of people face in their college years and then when they graduate and a gap year is honestly a pretty good time to sort of sit and sort through some of those feelings. Obviously, they come and go through your life, you know, depending on the season, whatever you're going through. But I guess I just wanted to put this in here because a lot of the comments on this thread we're talking about were like dudes, I think talking about lifting weights. And while that's good and fine, if you're taking care of yourself and like, you know what you're doing, I would just say like, if that's all that you're doing on your gap year, I would try to pick some other activities because you are more than your body and your time is worthwhile. So that's all I have to say. Everyone's everyone's beautiful. So I'm gonna stop talking now. He's gonna go back. I'm gonna go back to the thread. So this guy, he likes that he's making decent money. That's good. And sometimes when you're on a gap year, like I didn't super like love my job during COVID, but I was making good money and I was working with nice people and I was learning something. And that's like that's all you can ask for. Like, I mean, I was an intern. What are you gonna do? I mean, I did some cool stuff with them by the end of the year. Like I had made enough money to take a trip with my best friend and we had so much fun. We went to Portland, Oregon, visit my grandma and we had so much fun. I saved up some money so I could keep traveling in Scotland the next year. So that all worked out. So cons. So this guy says no one my age lives in the middle of nowhere town. I'm so bored. First of all, no one lives in your town. I think that's a really great opportunity on a gap year to get involved in your local community. So what I'll say is I think two of like the biggest this this touch sound like so many like juicy things about adulthood because people graduate college and you know, when you're in college, like you have time to work out, you have time to make friends, like there's all these friends around you time to like get involved and stuff to go out. And a lot of the times when people either move cities or move places or either like move back home, a lot of those resources from college are completely stripped away. And your only the only thing left in your identity is your job. And it is really hard to make friends. It's like you don't move with people that you know. And my whole my whole last video was literally about this, like, because like I have uprooted my life a few times in the last five years on my gap year. It was also COVID. So I like I really I had no opportunities to make friends really. I had some work friends, but like it wasn't a thing of like, let's go get drinks after work, because you're all going to die from a deadly virus. So if you're worried about this happening to you in a gap year, just know that you will have to put in some work to make friends. Maybe that means like joining a Facebook group or people meet up or joining like something in your local community. And it may not be full of young people, like if your community is small, if like you're from a small town, if you're from a big city, like a lot of people are very focused on jobs, but I'm sure that you can get involved in something. And it may take you a little bit to find some cool people because that's just true. But even if you don't find people that you love, it will give you experiences and like maybe some funny stories of joining like a knitting group or a book club or maybe you joined like an exercise running group in your city. And it was full of like 50 year old men and women. And then you just like started chatting with those people. And I was that that'd be a weird experience, right? For someone your age. But I feel like that would give you like a really good perspective on life, which like may sound kind of silly. But and having a unique perspective is so valuable these days, because we just have such group think based on like the internet and the online world. So I think that's that's a good thing. And okay, so this guy is also saying that he's so bored. So being bored, I think is I've talked about this literally so much on this channel. Being bored is one of the biggest benefits of taking a gap year. But the thing is, is you can't just like sit in it, you can't just at some point and it's like you're if you take a gap year and you're doing absolutely nothing. And you hate it. I hate to be the one to break it to you. But like that's the reason you hate it is because you're not doing anything. And even if you have absolutely no idea what you want to do, you have to choose something. You have to try something. Because then you'll be wasting your life. Like, and I know that's like so that's harsh. And there's mental health issues. And like, I completely understand that whole piece of it. If you have to like take some time off to figure that piece out, that is completely valuable. But if you are just like literally like sitting at home, like sleeping in doing absolutely nothing, like, maybe you go to work some days, maybe you don't even have a job like that, you will definitely regret because contributing to society is really, really important. You may be like sort of like a loner person, but you have to be a part of some sort of community and life to be okay. And even if all your friends are gone, you're feeling like, oh, I like wish I went to college and I wish I went to I wish I did this, I wish I did that. At some point, you're going to just have to take those feelings, set them down and be like, is this logically helping me? Yes, I'm mad at the world that I made this decision. But now I have to do something about it. Like, now I really have to take action because the opposite of overthinking is action. And that's a lesson that like, takes people a lifetime to learn. So if you can just start doing that young, you are going to be so much better off in the world, like in your life. But yeah, this whole thread is just talking about like, it's just like all these bros talking about like how they hate their job and how they go to the gym like six days a week. So ways that you can combat that if I had to take my gap year over again, I would have traveled pretty much the whole time. Because it was COVID, I couldn't have done that. I got a job and I got a job in my field because I was halfway through college. But if you are just going to college, just try something out and you'll have experience once you get to college. Like that's going to be such a big like up for you. But if you have all this free time and you don't know what to do with it, like you just, you have to try something. Like this past summer, I did something like I finally, I had always wanted to do forever. I had always wanted to do this. It was like a music festival. And I had worked in like music venues before. And I volunteered as an usher and I was working as like a house manager for the Spoleto Festival. And which is like a big arts festival that comes to Charleston. There's like symphony comes, the choral music, there's opera plays. I went to an acrobat show. It was so cool. There was so much going on. But the median audience and like workers in this festival were like, I was the youngest one by like, in the usher groups, I was the youngest one by 50 years most of the time. And one thing about me, I love talking to older ladies. I love it so much because they give you the real tea. They tell you how they're feeling. And I made like so many nice friends, like in one night, like this one lady, like she told me like all about like her whole life story. She told me about like her husband's plural. I got the tea. I heard about what the festival used to be like, oh, this is a fabulous festival now. Actually, in the 70s, we were stepping over people and taking away them smoking, you know, the devil's lettuce. I was like, no way. And I ate it up. I ate every single second of it up. And it made me so happy to go and talk to people. And yeah, they weren't people my age, but they were still people and I was contributing to society and seeing cool art. And you know, I had so much fun, even just doing something like that. I know now that like I need to incorporate that into my life somehow. And if I ever have free time like that again, like I retire one day, like that's what I'll be doing. I'm even thinking in London like taking up like volunteer ushering positions because that's something that I just love. So if you have something weird like that that you just love, just try it on your gap year. Like what's the harm because doing something is so much better than doing nothing. Doing nothing will get you nowhere. It won't you won't gain anything from that. And if you're lost, which is literally so valid, so many people on this whole entire planet are lost, I am lost. Kind of. I was lost at a certain point. And now I'm like feeling pretty good, but I was having major existential crisis this past year because it was my senior year of college. Okay, so the existential crisis crises do not end. I know that it's just a matter of time before I have another one. And that's okay because I know how to handle it now. And that's with action, right? It's like, but yeah, I mean, that's just like a little bit of my tough love to you all. If you hate your gap year, most likely it's because you aren't doing enough, which I know is like so the opposite of what you want to hear when you're taking a gap year. But you have to have some sort of purpose. And I feel like it's the same if you choose to go to school if you want to go to college. That's totally great. But you should go with a purpose and you should, everything you put yourself into you should work hard at because at least for me, it's like what makes my life worth living is that I worked really hard at this one thing and I saw results. And maybe that's a grade. If you're on a gap year, it won't be. And dealing with that more like ambiguous success model is challenging. But if you have that experience before going into real adult life, you will be so much better off for it. And that's just the God's honest truth. Please make sure to comment down below if you have had a similar experience on your gap year. You know, I think that they're not really all perfect. And that's something that is important to talk about. Because having a realistic view of what something could be is is a helpful tool. So comment down below, subscribe because I post new videos every Friday. And thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you have a nice day. Bye bye.