 Hi, I'm Susan Strackin, I'm president of the Davis High School PTA. Thank you so much for coming tonight. Each year the PTA puts on programs that are of interest, we believe would be of interest to high school parents and guardians. Last school year, parents definitely came to us, suggesting that we look into having a presentation on gap years. Tonight marks our first present gap year presentation, with a talk by Ethan Knight, founder of the American Gap Year Association. Our second event will be on February 28, 2017. We'll be having a gap year fair featuring vendors providing information on gap year opportunities. Before we begin, I want to thank Stephanie Kukuk for all of her hard work and research on gap years and for helping make tonight's event possible. I also want to thank Camille Melendez, Melend Perez, with help from Lisa McDonnell, McDaniels, our PTA program representative, who worked on all of the details and the arrangements for tonight. Lastly, I want to thank the DaVinci High School Boosters for helping us sponsor this event. Now before I introduce Ethan, I would be horribly remiss if I didn't urge all of you to support Measure H, the renewal of our school parcel task, the time of this November's ballot. Measure H has been endorsed by both the Davis High School PTA and the DaVinci High School Boosters. And the passage of Measure H is absolutely essential to maintain the quality education and programs for our students. Now it requires a two-thirds vote since it is a parcel task. And it's also at the end of a very, very long ballot. I think there's something like 17 state ballot measures this year. So please be sure to vote. Please be sure to go all the way to the end of the ballot, where you'll find Measure H, and please be sure to support Measure H. Now on to not tonight's program. Ethan Knight has been working within the world of Gap Year since 1996 when he took his own Gap Year to Indiana, Nepal, and Tibet. After graduating, he weren't to work for LEAP now as an intern, whereas passion for education took forward. He led programs for Gap Year students and eventually became the assistant director of the organization. After LEAP year, he founded Carpathian Education. Here, he also created a nonprofit organization dedicated to the inclusion of economically disadvantaged students in Gap Year programs and higher education. Eventually, after six years at Carpathian, he recognized the need for professional association amongst Gap Year providers and founded the American Gap Association. With that intervention, it is my pleasure to introduce Ethan Knight to talk about the Gap Year, taking the time to maximize your future. Thank you all. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear myself quite well. Thanks so much for being here, especially to the PTA. I also want to give a special thanks to our student alumni. We have Rachel on the left. She's done a Gap Year with Global Volunteers in National as well as Pacific Discovery. Then Ken did a Gap Year with Global Citizen Year. And finally, Susie did a Gap Year with Knowles. So the plan for the night right now is I'm going to talk at you. Unfortunately, I have to do you all now for about 40 minutes or so and then open the door for them to give some specific feedback. They're each going to give about 10 minutes of talk from their experiences, what it was, how it related to college, the process and sort of what they got out of their Gap Year. Then we're hopefully going to open it up for some questions at the end. Let's see, a bit of housekeeping notes. I've been reminded that the USA Gap Year Fair is going to be hosting a Gap Year Fair here in Davis on February 28. So my encouragement would be to please up online usgapcarefairs.org that's our organization that we run but they put together about 35 or 40 fairs around the country and it's your opportunity to speak with around 30 or 40 different programs and speaks to professionals about each individual program. It's a phenomenal opportunity. So please up online register. I guess the alternative would be to not show up and you'll regret it or I guess if you wanted to. I guess it's here in the same building. Am I right? No, it's close by though. Great, so they'll be sending out announcements. Just make sure you register for that. Let's see, the final piece here is I do want to say, I think it's always ironic Gap Year's themselves are fundamentally rooted in experiential pedagogy, experiential learning. And I think it's always funny that we should do this in such a traditional format of non-experiential. And there are times and places where that's fitting, this unfortunately is not on this format. So I will do my best to entertain you with bad jokes, bad puns, I warn you if I expect a few eye rolls, maybe a few groans if I'm doing my job well. So please boo or kiss if you feel the same way. And then the last thing that I want to say is alright, so I'm going to dive in. So this organization, the American Gap Association this is only an hour or about two or three years. As my introductory introducer said, Susan said, I started it really because I felt like we needed a rallying point. We need to clarify our message. We had an opportunity to do something that had a radically positive impact on my own life. And so I started it with the idea of really hitting four main areas. And so the four areas that ADA really works within is really sort of information and resources, that's number one, that's getting talks to you all, that's providing resources on our website, planning tools, guides, financial aid information, programs, those kinds of things, that's all on our website and it's a non-profit our job is to just really be free and available for you all as well as the educational counselors that are in the area. Another piece is research. I was aware that if we're going to grow the movement we have to know what the movement's actually translating to in students' lives. And so just last year we released the 2015 National Alumni Survey. It's the largest research effort in the gap year world in the states ever. And it brought in around a thousand student voices and we'll get to some of the data later on here. But what I think is really compelling about it is that it's showing students are having some long-term impacts not just sort of in the gap year but that translate to the rest of their lives. Another thing that we work within is equity. So it's part of my goal is to get gap years as accessible to federal financial aid, so that's the dollars. And preferably also with college credit. This is a kind of experience that will change someone's life so significantly and so profoundly. It's something that I think everyone should have access to. And the last piece that we do is we've created the best practices and that's something that we hold is recognized by the Department of Justice. Basically as a way to sort of say we know that there's certain things, especially when you're traveling internationally, that are just sort of smart things to do. There are things that maybe we've been learned the hard way, but those who have come before say the others who haven't gone in the hard way as well. And so that's what we have. We have an accreditation program for certain organizations if they pass through them. And that's sort of one of the ways that we decided it made sense to help demystify the experience so you can at least have a bit of a menu of, you know, like these are qualified. And they are all like super expensive. There's some that are on the lower end of the spectrum. So my gap year, at the end of my gap year, this is what I was able to say. I already have everything I could possibly need to be successful. It took me two years to figure out what that action you meant, but that's what I was able to say after my gap year. Fundamentally, what that meant for me was I already have everything. It's not to say that I have all of the information I could ever need, but that's to say I have access to the resources if I but ask. In essence, the question became as important as the answer is what I learned. And then in terms of success, one of the things that I love about that word is where do we get our version of success? Who taught you what success looks like? You actually asked yourself, what does it mean to live a successful life? I think most of us, we just take for granted the definitions of success based on our peers, media, our parents, sort of what we see on TV without ever really stamping back to say, hmm, is that what's right for me? Because I think if you try and live someone else's definition of success, by definition you will be unsuccessful living. So I think it's worthwhile to take the time to reflect about what it is that your life should be about. What it is you want to do with this one wild, precious life that you have. I think all of the panelists would probably agree that their experience definitely translated into a clarified version of that definition. So my gang here, I followed the herd my freshman year. I just went with everyone on to my freshman year of college, even after having someone talk to me like I'm going to you. I just couldn't muster the courage, I don't know what it was, nothing, nothing just coalesced. And so I went my freshman year of college and did what I think we in the industry sometimes laugh, is that most students actually do take a gap year time off, but they just oftentimes call it their freshman year. And I think it can all probably relate to me and understand what I'm saying with that. But that freshman year I ended up spending a lot of time not studying. I went to a really good school district, as I imagine all of you have. And what I found was I was doing maybe 30 minutes of homework a week, and A-minus is I'm not the smartest guy in every room. And so I just thought what am I doing? I'm wasting my time. And so I reached out to a gap year consultant I'll explain what those are in a moment. And they set me up to go to Indian Holland to vet for seven months. And those seven months brought together a variety of experiences, everything from terra cotta pottery to trekking for three weeks to meditation, yoga, ashrams. I volunteered as source on manufacturing plant, became a professional baker, and lived in a patch top for a month during monsoon season. I would not recommend that. I got sick, I went to the hospital. I ticked off a lot of my life's boxes in that one seven month period. And then I came back and I picked up a job for the five months that were gaining here in order to resupply what I had drawn from my college account. They sent, fair enough. I then went back to school, same school. Most students are going back to their school or sort of picking a school that they're going to college with and then going back to that same school after their gap year. And graduated with degree in English and philosophy and then the rest is history. Thanks so much. So, I'd like to point this slide out for a couple reasons. One is I think it's, you should be suspicious of any guy who's representing the thing and saying that it's great. And so this is Google. This is not me. What I love about this is it is objective. This is based purely on the search terms gap year and probably I think the embodiment of why you are all here because it's being talked about more. It's normalized a bit more. And something that I'm kind of always like to point out is if you look at, these are this, you know, most of the students are taking a gap year. It's really taken fire in the Northeast and as you go, it takes a little bit of time to get left. But this is what the trends have been. And I'll give you one guess when Malia Obama announced. Yeah, that hit our web traffic a lot and my speaking time went up significantly. So this is how we choose to define a gap year. It's sort of tough to define a gap year because it could sort of be just about anything for anyone. One thing that it is most certainly not is just sitting at home just working at home playing video games. That's not a gap year. If you go to ask a college for a gap year deferral, they won't do the deferral for that. So what we define it as is a semester or year on. I like that part. Typically take it between high school and college, increasingly students are taking gap years after college in addition to before college in order to deepen one's personal, practical and professional awareness. And so I think that sort of sums it up really well. What I like to say furthermore is as a gap year it's a minimum of two months of actual sort of outbound time. And I like to see that that's even more. Like a year would be fantastic. But what we're finding is roughly 70% of students are doing sort of real conservative, sort of structured outbound programming about a semester. So two months is the very minimum and part of the reason for that is that's just where we see students really starting to click a lot of pieces together that sort of make a lasting impact. The pedagogy is primarily experiential. So I break that into three sub-sections. Self-governance. That's basically saying you get to reap some of what you sow. It's natural consequences. It's if you don't book the hotel and you end up in a really dirty place you gotta live with that. And that's just part of what it is. Some people call it prescribed adversity. Another piece is reflection. So to have a good experience is a good thing in and of itself. But until you reflect on it, it's not learning. And the gap you're fundamentally as we're defining it is educationally motivated. And so we just want to make sure that students take some pause after each experience to stand back and say, what's this about? What did I get from it? What does it mean? And what I love about the gap year is in traditional schooling you'll see a reflective process sort of writing a paper. And some gap year programs offer that. What I love though is you'll see gap year programs offer that reflective element through journaling, through blogging, through photojournalism, through composing a musical piece, through charting out the path of the professional chess player that they maybe have been enamored with over the course of time. Whatever it is, the problem is you have to stand back and reflect on it. Otherwise it's not learning. Mentorship. For me there's two big components about the mentorship needs. One is that it's really important that you have some whether to make sure that you're safe. To check in with you every now. If you're overseas and someone can't look at the white of your eyes and say, something looks up. Are you okay? Often times students, this is the first time for many that they're away from home and they won't know that they're not okay. The classic story is, how do you know when it's time to take a cut to the doctor? Well I don't know, mom tells me. Well okay you're kind of on your own now. You've got to figure that out on your own. It's really important to check in on them. The other part about mentorship is, I like to say it's capitalizing on these learning opportunities. A student when they're out and about they see someone in dire straits and your heart goes out so that they don't know what to do with it. Whether it's a homeless person in India or any other situation, an animal. A good mentor is going to stand back and say, there's something there. Let's dive into that. Let's inquire further about that. That's where the educational piece comes in. The other parts are less experiential. They oftentimes take the form of an experience. That's empathy. That's learning to see things from the other's perspective. To put that in working terms, all of you students in your generation will have a boss who's from another culture or be the boss of someone who's from another culture. It's important to know how to navigate those cultural lines. Another part about the empathy piece, we're too interconnected. I think it's no longer something that we as a species can afford to say is, that doesn't affect me. The hurricane that just hit Haiti, again. How many know when the last time? How many remember when any earthquake was in Haiti? I admit I have to look it up myself. It doesn't happen. And it's been six years and they haven't done much in terms of the real building back. And yet I think we can no longer afford as a species to just say, well I donated my money, it's time to move on. I think it's important that we understand how interconnected we really are. And I think for the first time we're dealing with something, climate change, that's actually showing that what happens in China does affect us here. What we do here affects those downwind. It is more interconnected now than it's ever been before. Not just on the economy, but also in terms of the environment. And so that's why the empathy is so important. And the last piece is emphasis on challenging comfort times. I always find that students learn best when you're on the edge of what's comfortable. I mean we all do. So why not put yourself into that learning in a traditional school environment for how many years? And then you're going to go to another year of that. I think it's in some ways a disservice to not expose yourself to another type of learning. And that's where the experience comes in. And some colleges don't get you wrong or are doing the experiential learning very, very well, very progressively. But colleges are slow to the uptake on that. And so oftentimes for students this is their first exposure to experiential learning. And why gaffers do that? I'm just going to touch on this real briefly in the interest of time. For most students I find that they're going to fit probably one to two of these profile elements. For me it was the meaning seeker and probably the pragmatist. The struggle is oftentimes someone who has a learning difference. Maybe they haven't succeeded in traditional learning, but they find in an experiential endeavor they just, they find, oh my gosh, I can do this. Actually I have found that I'm very intelligent. I have that form of intelligence and support. Now I can feel that I have my own two feet to stand on. The worker, oftentimes this is the Harvard, this is the Ivy Leaker, this is the one who is just burned out. What we see the three most common reasons why students are taking a gap year are one, burnout from the competitive pressures of getting into school. They need some time to recharge their batterings. The second reason is a desire to know more about themselves. And that piggyback's very close to the third of saying I want to explore I want to know more what's out there. I think one of mankind's limitations is that we can only dream as big as we've seen, and I'm sorry, TV does not count. So if you go out into the world, only then can you really understand how much there is that's out there, all these different ways that it is to do this thing we call life. So as you're thinking about structuring the gap year, I figure it's always helpful to start so you can start sort of organizing the thoughts as we appear to talk. So oftentimes what I'd like to suggest is that we're going to be talking about what we're going to be talking about in the next quarter or semesters, but distinct chunks. So summer, as I was just talking about with Susie, I think it's really important that work should be a part of everybody's gap year. At some point you have to contribute. Part of that's having skin in the game, part of that's sort of I see a growing trend in students sometimes to say I paid my money and I do my do your education thing on me and of course it doesn't work that way. So you're going to contribute and then you'll have a deeper sense of ownership of the experience. You want to claw every inch of breadth out of each experience. I think that's a good thing. Fall, typically this is the time that students start off with more structure. I always like to encourage, start with more structure and work your way down to less. If you don't know how to navigate the cross-cultural norms, if you don't have a good sense of sort of wilderness at first aid and how to treat yourself if you're in an unfamiliar environment and what motivates you or for instance when to make a call and say there's a hurricane coming. Who do I consult? What do I look at? What are my resources? And what's the right decision here? There is a right decision in those cases. That's when it's nice to have someone who's structuring it and will show you in essence how to think through the various processes of thought. Take some time for the holiday. I really love if it's at all possible to come home for some period, you never know how much you grow until you come home and you try to integrate with your friends and they've been on the college path and you're just doesn't fit the way that it used to. Maybe you try drinking or partying like you did in high school and it doesn't fit the way it used to. You're different but you don't realize that until you have the opportunity to go through in learning there's something called transformational learning theory and it's through a radical juxtaposition. I'm experiencing myself through a different lens and that's where the learning really comes from. That's when you stand back and say, I get it, I have to grow a lot. Winter, spring, often times a lot of students are taking a gap year just as a first semester and then they're matriculating in Middlebury for instance, they call it FED. Often times there's more colleges that are offering spring start dates, something like that or you maybe just come back and do work at the end of it again, so you've had a semester and come back and work and we're going to pay it back. Summer, often times this is where it starts and maybe students are coming back and really preparing for college and of course fall is when college starts for most students. So planning tips and tricks. I'm just going to show this up just for a brief moment. The slideshow will be made available to you afterwards as my understanding but some of the things that I'd like to point out when you look at the correlation of the positive outcomes, this is obviously from our national alumni survey, forming relationships with my peers and following structure. So having someone there who's sort of showing you how to do it, I remember when I first landed on my gap year in the hall and immediately was ripped off straight out of the airport, I mean classic experience, but in this phenomenal German woman who took me under her wings for a good day and that's all it really took for me in that time and space to really have a sense of agency and security. But somebody had to show me and if I hadn't done that honestly I'd imagine where my life would be very differently than now. Other things to look at, managing my own budget for all, I can't emphasize this enough students often don't have a sense of how to manage a budget and how important is that in life? Are we really doing it on the surface if we're not showing them how to do that? Living in a home state, this is one of the most consistently positively rated experiences in a gap year. It's also one of the most consistently rated experiences for insurance claims, for harassment for discomfort, whatever it might be. So if you're going to go to a home state just don't knock them out of the door just find someone who's reputable, right? So options for the best gap year. These are just sort of some of the ways to think about it. So as you're thinking about each one of those semesters, in essence you can do any one or number of these things and so it starts off from more structured going down to the left. So a facilitated gap year, that's an accredited one by HGA, that's credit buried. So some colleges are now starting off for gap years. Oftentimes one of the things that I've seen students do is just go oversee land in a language school where they do the home state as part of the language school and then they have soft landing and then they use that to venture out and find more independent kind of experiences, internships, volunteer opportunities, that kind of thing. Wilderness, as Knowles does, as Albert Bowen does, they have programs that go all over the world. You can do a Knowles experience for instance in Argentina and then finish and stay in Argentina and travel a little bit on your own. Volunteer placements, I'm going to come back to that one because that's a bit of a handle on arms. Pay work, like I said, it gets important and everybody gets some time on that. Work exchanges, how many of you guys have heard of Woofing, willing workers on organic farms, worldwide workers on organic farms, I think they kept it after them but changed it multiple times over the course of their lifetime. But that's $35 is what it costs you. It's a subscription to an online account you can go through and say, oh, there's a farm that focuses on olives, there's a farm that focuses on wildlife, there's a farm that focuses on horses, and going to be a work trade for five days a week you get your room and your board covered and then your weekends are free. That's a great way to do it, a little caution, do a little research in advance. Some of the farms are, you know, we love to look at UFOs, we're big UFO people, others are like, we play bluegrass every night, you know, so make sure that it's a good cultural bit for you. Internships, this is all on the rise. I think a large part of what I'm seeing from gap year sort of starting on their experience is a desire to explore more of a potential career. If you can think about this is, so the average college student changes their major three to five times. What's interesting about that is the average college student takes six years to graduate. Do you see a correlation? Most gap year students are not changing their majors because they have a deeper sense for what they want to do. It makes sense. So this is a great opportunity to explore. Classic analogy, a classic example. I want to be a marine biologist. I hear that from a lot of students, but they think that a marine biology sort of a career is going to be more on the water. Of course, mostly what it is is in a lab and working grants. Unfortunately, if you're choosing a marine biology path oftentimes a college, not until your junior year that you have the opportunity to really be in the field experimenting with what that looks like. Guess what? You're already two years in. You're going to change your major. That's going to set you back. Better to stand back and experience what it is even for a short period. Talk to people who are doing it. And this is one of those areas where it's sort of personal travel. It's not even necessarily, but sort of tapping on family connections. A lot of students are doing an independent gap year just tapping on a family connection overseas. Some are domestically. Some are away from home, away from home where sort of you can stay with them for free and that's a great way to start out part of your gap year. Music arts, other skill building that's big. I've seen students do painting parts. You could for instance go via a gaucho in Argentina. So building earthenware houses for local Mapuche Indians in parts of Patagonia. That's $15 a day while you're studying Spanish and living on a horseback in the biodynamic community. You could volunteer in South Africa focusing on rehabilitating injured animals. And that's just from the tip of my tongue. You could go into London and be a theater major working with Atlas youth having your housing paid for and you still have to pay for food. But those are just some of the ideas that are on the tip of my tongue. I've obviously been seeping myself in this a while. The one I want to come back to is the volunteer placements. Volunteering is a very complicated endeavor especially when you're going to an area where there's a power differential. And if you're going to volunteer for an organization somewhere in the developing world especially in the developing world make sure that you do it with a reckoned organization. I cannot emphasize that enough. More harm is so much easier to do than good even with the best of intentions. For instance, here's the classic in our jail I did for about good thing or bad thing. We take all of our t-shirts. We put them up in a container. We send them to Central Africa. Good thing or bad thing. The answer It's complicated. It's complicated. And that's the challenge. If you look at it from the local perspective what industry are you totally gutting by all of a sudden throwing all of these clothes in for free? All of the tailors, all the merchants. And so they now have that stable income it's just given away for free. And so they've been building a career around this thing and with our good intentions we've unfortunately set something down to the negative for them. Then there's all the people who benefit from it from the clothes. Classic example with USAID we build a wall, we spray paint donated by the American people property of USAID, USAID for a school. USAID comes back a few years later. These are examples that are real. USAID comes back a few years later the walls and crumbles and say why didn't you take care of the wall? They say well we didn't really want the wall so why would we think that it's ours? It's yours to take care of. So that's where volunteering becomes incredibly complicated and all the more reasons you're going to do volunteering in an area where there's a power differential it's incredibly important to do it right so that means finding a reputable organization to go through. And they don't have to cost a ton of money but they will cost some money because to do it right does cost a little bit of money for oversight. So supporting the student as you're thinking about the gap here some of the common concerns being a year older and you're more mature, losing academic edge I remember one of my peers they said well I don't want to go to take a gap here because I wouldn't graduate with my friends and really that's your best reason? I think that's your reason you do better than that. A student driven process I think it's really important to ask why does the student want to do it regularly at your spec appearance sort of pushing down the line and hopefully it clicks for the student but I think a fundamental goal for a good gap here is the majority of the driving they don't have to do all of it but they need to do the majority of it and then what are specific skills and interests I think a gap year again it's an opportunity to explore what you want to do with the rest of your life so it doesn't have to start with what's your career we're not necessarily asking you to define what you're going to do for the rest of your life in this moment this is more of an exploratory time so what are your hobbies, what are you enjoying think about this as an opportunity to explore what you earn a living with cool maybe that's not possible I mean I'm not going to encourage everyone to go out and crochet neckties and sell them on that seat for the rest of their lives I'm sure there's probably people who are doing that and if that's your day I can go for it but again the emphasis would be to explore what you're interested in double down on that, see if there's an opportunity to turn that into a real career vocation and then realistic expectations the one area where I see students sort of fail I've never seen a student say that they regret the guy in 3,000 students I've never seen a student say that but the one area that I see students flounder a little bit is if they go in and expect it to be more than it is so the example I can share is there's an organization in Bathambang, Cambodia my mom lived there for five years called Teh Tek Dong we sent some students there at one point and they worked with sexually trafficked girls to do some rehabilitation and we had an American student come in and she was like well I was really expecting to be able to sit down with them talk to them, hear their stories get them on the right path and yeah that'd be great it's like okay that's a good intention but you're not a social worker you don't speak Khmer we don't have six months to build a relationship that it's going to take to really get to the bottom of what's going on for this individual and so maybe that's not the most responsible thing to do maybe what we do is support the existing efforts of the organization and so that's an effort in the direction of responsible volunteering as you're thinking about this from the student perspective this is just a basic planning questionnaire why do you want to take some gap time I guess not gap years what are your interests where would you like to go what's your budget map it out, if you could do anything what would you do think about it in the fall and spring chunks very helpful, three distinct elements can often times be a phenomenal output many programs actually can incorporate several distinct elements into it just because it's a system that really works and then go through and rate U.S. international, solo, independent this is by center frame programs they started the gap here in the states back in 1980 I think is what it was and so this is sort of their rough and tumble version they have like three times as long if you sort of choose to work with them this is just sort of a simple way to start thinking about the context for how you're going to make your gap year work these are all things that students will expect I'm sure all of these will come up for you I won't belabor the point just know that adversity is part of the picture some good advice to think about connecting with locals try something new one of the things I love hearing from students about the gap year is I have no idea how much eating good food for a week straight will change my perspective McDonald's doesn't know how to do it for you does it and then supporting the parent I think it's really important to also recognize that the gap year it's not just the student who's going on the experience the parent is too not only is this sort of a right passage not only is this sort of you're letting go of this being that has been in you for your for their entire life you have to honor that and that means including them in the process that means paying the respect that goes with it probably also because they're helping to build a little bit but I think it's really important to recognize that a lot of parents might not understand sort of what this is if you're going to talk to them if you're sort of if a parent often times I think it's a little bit of a shame but I've heard from parents sort of I'm in a cocktail conversation cocktail party and I don't want to say I don't want to say they're taking a gap year because I don't really know what that's going to look like well here's the beauty you can say the president's daughter is doing it is that not good enough for you this is the first time we've been able to say that I'm only cashing on that as much as I can and then in terms of outcomes like soft skills, hard skills, college admissions I'm going to show you this in a second but the outcomes are out of this world they're great and quite frankly I've actually been seeing some colleges start to offer more financial aid to those students who are coming as a result of the gap year it's kind of cool Laura Wilson College in North Carolina is offering I think $16,000 through a leadership award and I'm seeing this come online more and more and more so if you think about planning for a gap year financially this is sort of some of the ways you think about it so professional gap year counselor I put zero to $25,000 that's the cost of the gap year counselor would charge anywhere from $700 up to $2,600 and often times they can be one of the cheapest ways to actually organize your gap year not only the experts but they have these great connections overseas so at one point in terms of programs if you wanted to be an artist they could say we can set you up as with an artist in residence in Paris you'll have free housing and food you'll be their go-per you'll have free paint time, studio time and your job is to study French how many artists needs as they come up I think we have here I've seen that happen in Mexico too so the gap year counseling often times it's like I said it's a couple hundred to $1,000 usually they'll set you up with like a free consulting time we don't need any commissions on that or anything it's really just sort of for the good of the order that there's about maybe half a dozen that is sprouted up around the country and that's all that they do is just gap year consulting an independent gap year semester $5,000 to $10,000 is about what you can expect and again thinking about it it's one of those four sections you're going to see some components built in overlapping a bit accredited programs that's like with AGA at some colleges offering gap year programs and experiences Tufts and Princeton are now doing it there's probably another dozen or so schools that are offering their own version of the gap year partnership with the gap year organization a little citizen year now works with new school yeah, new school in New York to offer college credit to articulate let's see $2,000 there's one organization called Unprocached they work with nonprofits overseas, they do some vetting of the nonprofit, they have a curriculum that's done through video Skype so that they have that mentorship component they're accredited, they cost $750 plus your expenses it's a pretty good deal so I'm making a point you don't have to cost a lot of money and then they go all the way up to $10,000 for a semester and I will say that those higher cost programs, you know, you're paying for really professional staff that are well trained high levels of security and stability the way that I oftentimes now I'm thinking about there's a program that I have some contacts with that was in Cuba where the hurricane was going right over and I can just imagine the parents were like, oh god please I just want to be able to call someone and talk to someone and know what's going on and if that's something that's important to you, that's a sort of a possibility down the road and you might want to build a program where there's someone you can call that's systems in place, the structures are set up and then service here, volunteering for the lower cost, America City Year and NCCC are great gap year experiences not only do they cover your room in board not only are you volunteering in a purposeful and meaningful way domestically here in the States but in a lower income neighborhood not only are you doing the cohort but you also get $5,700 at the end of your year of service to go towards whatever educational endeavors coming next and trust me colleges will love this stuff so it's a college experience I'm going to move on to the interest of time but I'm still going to get to the meat of it so the best advice is you're thinking about a college, apply, get accepted then defer I wish it was so universal and so in the momentum and move on to the point that it's like you should just say I'm going to take a gap year and everybody would say yeah I'm going to do it it's not quite like that again certain schools, Colorado College if you say you're going to take a gap year in your initial application and it's a well intended gap year you don't have to sort of be like I'm going to do this Monday and this Tuesday it can be sort of this and this and the three distinct shows they actually give you extra credit in your admissions process if you're going to go to Colorado College many schools that you see schools for instance they just don't have a deferral policy in place so you should still go through this process because I think it's important to have sort of a next step I think it's also important to have all of your sort of ducks in a row because it's much more difficult to sort of get the letters get the transcripts, do all that stuff when you don't have access to a college counselor and maybe you're overseas in the Serengeti, that's kind of a hard place to put together a college application so that's one of the reasons why I'm encouraged to do it in advance but I think it is still today and to this day the better it is the better ideas to apply to the school not necessarily mentioned you're going to take a gap year you could probably give a call and just say hey I'm interested in taking a gap year one you would advise and just hear what they have to say AGA has a currently growing list of college deferral policies on our website I looked everywhere for it I couldn't find it so I just said great I attached an intern to do it so I was about 300 college deferral policies on our website complete with sort of timelines frequently and often times with you apply transfer often times it does financially if you're in need space they transfer no every year you have to reapply for the FAFSE every year you have to reapply for the FAFSE definitely build a relationship with your college admissions officer I think that's a really good thing to do keep them informed of what's going on get them excited for your experiences and often times guess what they're the ones who are lobbying for certainly Medicaid scholarships it's important to spend some time going through the experiences knowing how to sort of frame it all not only on your resume but in your college admissions pieces this will probably be a significant amount of the fodder for the papers that are going to come through the entire college experience because you've basically taken like the whole lifetime of experiences and put it into one concerted period and it's amazing how much that gets referred to again and again and then be aware of the credit if you are already credit on your gap here often times it can it can be about a threshold of coming in as a transfer student which traditionally means less American aid not necessarily thus it can sort of need aid but sometimes that balances out sometimes people are willing to say great but we're going to give you more as a leadership award as a result of these phenomenal experiences that you're bringing to our campus schools you know that students are coming in with more leadership experience and skills and so they want to portal students to come on the program and then often times if you're going to apply to school and get accepted into further one caveat that the school is going to say is that's great you just can't earn credit from anywhere else and so be above board with that look at the college admissions officer as more ally even though it might feel like a business the college admissions officers really their job is to bring the right student fitting in and make sure that you're going to be in a position to succeed so this is the GPA ever so briefly this is from UNC we also have data from Middlebury and Colorado College this is a methodology put together by Bob Plagget he's a former admissions officer and financial aid officer at Harvard and a former dean of admissions at Middlebury and eventually after about 10 years of being a dean of admissions at Middlebury he was like why do all these chapter students he keeps them so good he keeps seeing them show up in leadership and sort of in all these endeavors what's going on here there's a faculty development methodology that basically what it does is every student who's going to most competitive colleges students are ranked on a scale of anywhere from 1 to 7 to 10 in the case of Middlebury where he did it it's 1 to 6 and that's pluses and minuses and that's an amalgam of their ACT scores your SAT scores, your college references the interview all of it it all goes into it and so if you just look for an SAT or ACT scores the predictive success for a student GPA diminishes over the course of their college experience it's actually not that great predictor for success in college but these points that they do the competitors will say it's a 5 plus is actually a phenomenally successful predictor sort of output in terms of GPA and so what this did was it said we expect a gap year student with a 5 plus to perform on the same a 3.0 and what we found was that they were freshman year performing at a 3.7 so you go from a 3.0 to a 3.4 their sophomore year it goes from we were expecting it to be at a 3.0 their sophomore year they ended up being a 3.25 and so the dark blue bars are statistically significant but what I think is actually quite impressive is the fact that they endured all four years they over predicted what they were expected to see from a GPA all four years so that's something that we're seeing pretty much across the board we think about it it makes a lot of sense they're taking all of the theory of the past years and getting some practical application in essence they're building a relationship to what they've learned it's really easy to just do an information download and one of the things that I like to point out is you know we in our society there's a bit of a confusion point here is that we actually have more information in the palm of our hands than mankind's total sum history right here at the internet I don't know if you as students have ever sort of found yourself wanting to correct a teacher or the classroom based on what you're seeing on Google but information isn't I think what students need anymore what they need is experience is sort of to be able to know what to do with the information and so in that way these students have the experience to be able to know what to do with the information they own it in a different way they pop in that big seaworth curiosity and it takes a very different sense of ownership for them these are some of the college like the outcomes that we saw from our natural owner survey this is self-recorded granted so there is a bit of a fall study this was meant as a preliminary effort and it's broken down into career, college, global engagement and personal and so what's interesting is you see the majority of the benefits are on the personal in the purple and blue but a few that I really like to point out 77% helped me find a purpose in my life I'd seen that as well worth a year in life 77% will work has impacted my career decision helped or will help me get a job 75% have said that here's what I love, 86% of gap year students 86% are saying that they're extremely satisfied or satisfied with their careers once they get working naturally, 52% of Americans are extremely unsatisfied with the work that they're doing I would much rather set myself up to live a life of happiness that's part of my equation for success looks like all of this is available online if you want to look at it and then come on down to college or whatever just real briefly, this is the resources it's just a good list of what's out there I'm going to leave this slide up as I transition on to the students not all of your students but the alumna what I'd love to do is Susie you're going to go first do you want to come up or do you want to take the mic? I'm going to ask each student to think about three key questions so I'm going to ask the questions and the ideas for them to answer and then we're going to go downstream and then open the space for questions for you about so do you want to pop the mic off and have a mic? can you guys hear me? so my name is Susie I work for UC Davis right now I'm from Maine originally so I'll figure out a little bit so I did a gap semester it wasn't quite a full gap year I graduated from high school semester early I really disliked high school and I was actually very unsure about college but I had applied to gotten in so I didn't have to worry about that aspect my parents said I could leave high school early if I did something worthwhile so I did a little semester for those of you guys who don't know there are a few pictures up here but it's like an outdoor experiential semester so like outward ground backpacking, canoeing caving, ground climbing and it's really without a lot of context with your family so you're out in the wilderness back when I was doing this I didn't have cell phones most people on my course didn't have cell phones they weren't really such a thing then and that was really good to talk to my parents I only kind of did that once every couple weeks and I could call on a pay phone and just with whatever quarters I got home and I just felt like I got a ton more confident when I was on this trip somewhat in terms of dealing with other people which I wasn't great at even after it all but a big thing with it was that whatever there didn't necessarily sink in right away but as I got older I actually think about it more and more and realized that the experiences I got from that and the experiences I still think about and the interactions I had with people those have really helped me in looking back on your sort of set at least in what I did with like a set number of people you interact with set number of personalities and I can sort of look back on those things and be like oh okay that's what was going on this is what I did wrong or that's what this person was doing that's why they were acting strange and so I can remember every day of my whole semester which is like almost three months and I think most people can't remember every day something that happened in that amount of time and even before I did it someone else I knew had done something similar and he told me that and I didn't believe him and that was, I did that 12 years ago and I can still look at every piece that was quite interesting So how did it affect your career and your goal? What sort of theory did you provide? That was a little different but it wasn't only about like after education I ended up becoming an engineer which I actually don't really do anymore but it did make it so that I was it helped me in making decisions in that I she did change majors once in college sort of looking at things that I liked and things I was good at I switched to engineering because that was something I thought I couldn't do and I realized I could afterwards after a time in grad school I realized that really wasn't the right thing for me but being able to make the decision to get off of that path I actually ended up doing something more like the second gap year where I lived on a farm in Germany and doing that I just had the ability to sort of say like okay well this isn't working now I need to figure out what's next and I felt like I could figure it out I was really lucky I had the support of my parents you know at times when I didn't have a job I had to go look at them a little while which maybe isn't what you want to hear not for long I would always do that temporary and that it wasn't going to be forever because I had the skills to be able to find the next thing and then in terms of like building towards the college experience did it like did you apply, did you defer, did you take a leave of absence how did it impact your college experience my college experience I had already kind of decided that was the thing I had already applied to college and got accepted I was just leaving high school early but doing something different and I do think when I got to college I was not the same as the other people there I didn't feel homesick because I was used to being away from home so I didn't even have to think about that I had friends who didn't call me every day I love my parents but I didn't feel like I needed to talk to them all the time and I actually think I appreciated them and I just felt like I made my own schedule I was better at managing my time just better at making the decisions that I needed to make without overly relying on other people and how did you find your time with those my parents did pay for that which was very generous of them but what they didn't pay for is in college I was expected to pay for everything so I always paid for my books I paid for my housing so it wasn't fully I had to have a job before going to college and I had to have a job there in college and I think that was important in fact because it used to be important I appreciate that I had to work for transportation and today I'm a little citizen here so the three questions they were asked is just to get them right what did you do on your gap here what impact did it have on your life goals basically your relationship with your parents and then how did it impact your college experience performance can everyone hear me hi everyone my name is Tien and I'm a global citizen year alumni and I went to southern Brazil if anyone heard of the states Santa Catarina, Brazil south where Florian office is so I just wanted to reiterate this word gap here that's been used in popular media for a while now and one of the things that the founder of global citizen year stuff that really stuck to me that really applied to my whole experience was the term gap here the word gap itself has a negative connotation of that after high school you're just going to fall into this hole this gap and you're not sure where you are you're just stuck there but I think a better way to coin the term is breaking you from this experience in what we call high school all the way to your college career and on to your life after college and first thing to I wanted to share was how did I get involved with taking a gap year or a bridge year and my story is a little bit different I'm a first generation college student my parents both came from Vietnam in 2002 along with me of course and so my parents had hopes and dreams of where they wanted me to be and that's to be successful and I feel like that's the goal that every parent wants for their child to have a good life later on so the plan was always you're going to go here for high school and you're going to go to a good college and you're going to find a good job and you're going to get a little bit of life because that was why they came to the United States in the first place was to give me that opportunity and what was different was that because they loved me so much and because they did not want me to fail I felt like all my life they've always been right beside me holding my hands through my whole academic career and they're like okay take this class because then if you take this class it would look very good in college to take all these AP classes I'm pretty sure a lot of you would experience the same thing but I came to my senior year that fall not knowing really what to do I was applying for college and I was growing through the major and I'm like do I really want to do that hmm that sounds kind of interesting but what would my parents feel that if I chose this major I realized that I wasn't really making decisions for myself and I felt like if I would go straight to college that path would not be completely mine and that's what really bothered me and so I don't advise this to everyone but so that I secretly like looked for gap years without my parents knowing and I was like okay I'm just going to do my research application and fill all this out and see what happens I'm going to apply for colleges as well so what happened was I received my the letter of acceptance for my for global citizen year and around April that's when college admissions came out and that was when I also got my UC Davis admission letter so I was like okay oh my gosh I have to make a decision now what am I going to do and so they gave me like a two weeks deadline to send your confirmation like are you sure you want to take a gap year like you've been accepted do you really want to do this or not we're going to give this to another person so luckily for me I turned 18 I mean a few days after I received my acceptance letter so I was like okay this is the first time that I'm really going to make such a big decision for myself like what do I want to do and obviously I chose to take a bridge here and I signed all my papers and so when you get accepted into UC Davis you have this option of it's really easy they give you up to a year to defer your admissions and all you have to do is click a button it says like one year and then you submit it and it's like next so what I did was I printed out my admissions letter as well as my letter of deference and I sat my parents down and I was like oh my gosh look I got into UC Davis I will be attending next fall and she's like what what are you going to do until then I was like hello but don't stress I've got a solution and I put out my gap year acceptance letter because that's what I'm going to Brazil for nine months she's like okay I'm like I think it's kind of decided and I'm going to go with you happy then yay back to my gap year story so I went to southern Brazil and what I did was I was an apprentice for a sugar cane farmer which is also my host dad so every day I'm just going to tell you about what happens every day so in the morning I would wake up around 5am my host dad is already out for some reason okay really early and I would help him with the everyday chore of like milking the cows I'm going to clean the house a little bit make breakfast with my host mom and I did that for nine months so on the sugar cane farm so in the afternoon we would go chop down sugar cane and then we would sell it to local vendors for them to make the sugar cane shoes on the streets and that I'm from San Jose so the life coming from San Jose the Silicon Valley to rural Brazil was a struggle I would say because it's totally different from what I was used to and if I was to say the one thing that I learned from my gap year is grit and like I said earlier because I was the first generation college student my parents held my hands throughout the thing like if I was about to fall and my parents noticed it they were there to catch me but in Brazil there was no nobody to catch me which I did a lot like down the hill my host dad did try to catch me but that's a whole new story so yeah I learned how to brace through the hard times because I know that one day my parents unfortunately will not be there anymore and who's gonna help me when I go through my tough time I'm the one that's responsible for making the decisions for myself and I felt like it's a process that I've learned throughout my year just to take care of my well-being and just be open to all the challenges that come because now I feel like okay if I'm sick I know what to do with myself I'm gonna get myself to the wellness center and get a band-aid yeah so I highly encourage everyone to look into this option and there's probably something that works best real quick question in terms of how the skills are translated to college you know you're in college now sort of do you feel more prepared about ways, compared to your peers so like I said I worked and I'm sure you came from when I was there and when I came back to San Jose and so I left and around August I came back in April and I came back and I was sitting home watching the news because I missed the news I was like okay something feels weird like going back home without more of a culture shock to me then going there to Brazil and I missed it so much I missed waking up at five in the morning even though it seemed super crazy in the beginning so I would wake up at five in the morning and I would go make breakfast and my mom was like what happened who are you and I'm like mom just eat the breakfast and so what I did was I looked into opportunities to work in the agricultural sectors though I volunteered as a farm intern for my farm cultivation in San Jose and what I did was I pruned tomatoes, planted basil and had lots of fun messing around with the dairy and that reflected in my college career right now I'm a third year student at Lucy Davis studying global disease biology so that has led me to where I am today and I'm still very interested in plants and biology lab still messing in the soil yeah and I felt like that my gap year it taught me a lot it introduced me to something that I haven't experienced before which was getting my hands dirty going outside and feeling the leaves cutting down stuff yeah I learned a lot and thank you so much for the two programs, specific discovery and GVI hi everyone so I was going to say I usually spend my day speaking with fifth and sixth graders so you all are a super respectful audience I'm just like marveling at that right now we all go ahead and start I grew up in the northwest just outside of Seattle and I grew up thinking the thing to do in Seattle basically is go to University of Washington I had some school so it's my whole life basically planning out my academic career to go to UW and took all the AP classes and did all the extracurriculars in college that I thought would get me into University of Washington and then I started the application process when I was a senior to do international relations and I started the application and was like I don't know I don't know if I really want to go to University of Washington anymore I don't really have any backups I just had this feeling I don't really have any backups and I always had this idea for myself that I would take a gap year and so I decided not to go to school that year and just take a break and kind of give myself some time to figure out what I really wanted to do before I started diving into my college savings account and so I took a year off and I was staying home with my parents and working as a cashier to grocery store and taking some courses at community college and at that time staying home with my parents was able to save up enough money and research and figure out a bigger plan and that was how I ended up funding myself to go on the program to Southeast Asia so I did a program with Pacific Discovery which was eight weeks and we started in Thailand it was a small group of about 12 of us and one leader and we started in Thailand and went into Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam and ended again in Thailand for the holidays and then that was the experience where it was kind of there was an itinerary planned out for us the transportation and the accommodation activities were planned out for us for about 80% planned a little bit of free time in there and then I came home and I realized I was trying to figure out my next step because I wasn't going to university obviously staying home with my parents after traveling for two months in Southeast Asia was not an option I remember from my travels that my favorite part about I was going for the tracks and I really enjoyed exploring the natural world while I was there more than I enjoyed being in cities so I was looking at volunteer programs to do next and what really grabbed my attention was everything with an environmental focus so my next step was to bring together the rest of the cash that I had and my next step was I did a volunteer program for two months again with Global Vision International GVI and I chose to work and live on a remote base in Ecuadorian Amazon no electricity all of our water was streamed and needed to be filtered there was about 15 of us living on a base that was probably 40 minute walk to the nearest village which was just like a tiny village with a small clinic with like anti-venom if we needed it but if we needed to like go to a hospital or like go to a city or like get a cold Coca-Cola or like go to a city it was about a three hour bus ride away so we were like back there but I spent every day tracking through the jungle looking at all these amazing creatures bonding with the other small group of volunteers from all over the world that were living on that base and when I came home I could truly appreciate things like my washing machine and like having a dryer and not having to put baby powder on my sheets to make sure my bed wasn't moldy and all these things and I enjoyed being in that field so much that I decided to study environmental studies completely lost the idea of international relations I don't think I ever even knew what that was like what I would really do with that and I ended up going to Northern Arizona University because I wanted to be in a small mountain town and so many amazing outdoor activities to do and so basically my decision to take the bridge here completely altered my path and got me into an area of the country that's like the exact the Yang of Washington in Arizona and doing different fields and now I work in the summertime I work in Yosemite National Park as a backpacks and guide for youth wilderness trips which is literally my dream job and I work right now in Petaluma, a place called Walker Creek Ranch doing outdoor education working with assist graders in the field all day seeing for frogs and turtles and ponds and going for hikes and playing games and whatnot so yeah pretty much taking the gaffer was like probably one of the best decisions I could have made to put me in the place I am now and on the correct path and give you a huge sense of clarity I truly enjoyed every one of my environmental science courses when I was at school I had this huge focus I developed relationships with my professors because I was so interested in what they were doing I had this great sense of clarity I was talking about and I felt fantastic a whole time during my major because I knew I was doing a major that was going to put me outside in the environment working with my hands and making a difference and yeah it was totally worth it so a few points things I want to touch on just from personal experience with taking a gaffer one of them is always like a second gaffer as well after university this one was just like free flowing with my college roommate that I live with for all of college and the two of us flew to Santiago de Chile and then went south through Patagonia and back up to Argentina and then Bolivia, Peru yeah so something that I've learned it's called the second gaffer it's like you do make pretty popular so something I've learned from those experiences is I think something they don't talk about but traveling it's really big in social media right now Instagram, you see all these people going to all these amazing places all over the world all these videos on the internet with people's go pros and they're doing back flips on waterfalls with like a selfie stick and there's like EDM music playing in the background and it's like wow cool I'm going to do that and it is really inspiring but a lot of those things don't show the amount it takes to sacrifice beforehand to be able to go do these things and it's a sacrifice in kind of like this plan that you have for yourself this idea you have for yourself and then you're going to get a university and then you're going to go to grad school where you're going to start a career and you have to step away from that plan step away from all your peers are doing which takes a lot of courage and can create this self down like what am I doing, is it really worth it like how am I living with my parents right now or if I get a retail job and I have college degree and it's a sacrifice that you have to put into but that really probably is the most challenging part of the entire travel experience because once you're there it's totally worth it and it's a much more rewarding experience because you put that sacrifice into it in the first place the second thing that I want to talk about is what's the story, it's just something I've learned that you don't learn through university or any kind of academia you don't learn through experience so I was doing what's called a work away it's a work exchange program all kinds of different programs for free, you live someplace you work about 30 hours a week a lot of doctors do it to stay someplace and kind of rest up to learn about something for a while while they're traveling so I was doing a work away of how to go naturally working on a permaculture farm getting my hands dirty in the garden living in a community of about 25 other volunteers from all over the world and I've been there for about three weeks I was about to head north and I've held this beautiful relationship with just working in the garden all day and living in this remote location in Patagonia we had a traditional Mapuche ceremony Mapuche is the indigenous tribe and we had a traditional Mapuche ceremony where we did what's called a tennis golf which is a sweat lodge and so we're in this sweat lodge we created the whole thing we had hot igneous rocks inside the sweat lodge that we got hot with this huge fire we've been burning for hours before the ceremony and all of us were in there and the man who owned the farm was performing the ceremony and what we were doing was we were passing around Sage, Sage Bundle and talking just speaking freely from the heart just no problem just what's on your heart and one of the other volunteers something that's really stuck with me that she said she goes, isn't it incredible that every wrong turn every wrong decision, every mistake that we've ever made in our entire life right now with all these people which is exactly where we're supposed to be and everybody broke into like this hall in the ceremony it was just this really beautiful moment but that's one of the main things that I took back with me from my travels is that throughout your life you're going to have these what seem like missed opportunities or wrong decisions or a job that you really wanted or a relationship that just didn't work out but through traveling you can learn that it's these wrong wrong paths or wrong decisions or like missed opportunities are really just leading to where you're supposed to be and so there's, you know it's not worth it to worry about these things or stress about what you think you're supposed to do in life because I wasn't supposed to go to UW on a failure because I didn't go to UW everything worked out the way I did because I didn't go to UW and because I'm a University of Washington and because I traveled and took that risk to be able to learn that that's where I'm staying right now and I was written by Stephanie's daughter that says, and I took a picture of it it was exactly the same it says, it's not about waiting for the storm to stop it's about learning how to dance in the rain so with that we have 15 minutes for questions I suspect most of the questions are going to be directed at them but I'm happy to answer what I may but if there is if I can get a show of hands or anything if I have some questions, if there aren't any then I'll be around for a little bit afterwards if people have some questions, please show me your hand and I'll be able to see what I can do yeah, in the back so the question is, do any of these programs allow use of the 529s the 529s are an educational savings planned to go towards college yes, in some cases they do college credits are a requirement and many programs do allow college, do have some relationship with college credit I think Golden Citizen here does as does Knowles I don't think the Civic Discovery does as yet, nor does GDI but that's part of the movement that we're seeing happening much more so so yeah, you'll have to ask each individual program the right answer for that is going to be sort of talk to your accountant but oftentimes it really depends on the 529 fund that you're using and the relationship with the college but the short answer is yes, it is increasingly available any other questions? because you took two gap years too and one year is not that big of a difference would you restate the question okay, so you're taking you graduate from high school and you took one year on and then you're taking a second year on okay, well that's a bit different from my experience because I did well yeah, I guess I did take two years off and honestly I didn't make that much of a difference I was 23 when I graduated university I mean like I turned 21 a little bit before on my friends that was like the only difference and I honestly think it's worth it just to be in university I've got a clarified sense of purpose and that confidence and maturity that comes with it because university is the kind of you don't want to just be going through the motions of the classes, you know, you want to be making those connections with your faculty and like really diving deep into the field that you're studying and it's so much, it's such a huge investment of your time and money and such an amazing opportunity it's like totally worth it just to be a little bit older but there's people in university also that are of all ages between 18 and 21 or 22 you know, you'll have classes of people from all over the board I was just your personal preference if you want, it depends what kind of experience you want really, you know no matter what, I mean it was a little bit challenging coming in as a non-freshman because I was a community college so I never lived in the freshman dorms but you probably don't want to live in the freshman dorms unless you're like 17 or 18 anyways so that was a little bit of a difference and it took probably a little bit more time for me to find my niche but that was not more the experience and also I had a greater social abilities and social confidence from the gap here, the connections I made from people traveling, those authentic connections you know, being truly accepted for who you are just being completely yourself without any of the other social identity factors that you experience when you're abroad yeah, so I guess it does take a bit more time because you don't get that freshman dorm kind of social boost but college is such an open environment anyways to meet new people that you can still either of you guys might want to sort of voice an answer to that question too I can add to it a little bit so I went back to strictly undergraduate college, it was actually quite small after I had already gotten my degree and I was taking some classes out later and I was 25, most of the students in the classes I was in were like 18 or 19 basic science classes for maybe when you graduate school and what I found was that I was a huge demand as a lab worker I already knew what I was doing, I was prepared and I think you would be too you just have more experience and I think actually become a valuable member of the community and if you're in an early small place yeah, maybe they'll be a few people you'll feel like you're a little older but even if you come in two years later they'll still be the seniors, they're the same age as you and once you're in college age it kind of stops mattering as much it's more about just how mature people are and who you end up being friends with so you might meet someone who's a freshman who's a lot younger than you and you really can't get them and they're really mature or you might end up being friends with someone in your class who's 40 age really is not the deciding factor in how your college experience will be you might not go to some crazy parties and something like that so a lot of my conversations my freshman year and my sophomore year were still in the realm of hi I'm so and so what's your major it's like somehow that's the access point for everybody and it's like that's so not defining of who I am I can tell you a story and I can tell you again it was incredibly easy to be popular because they could always rely on telling me a good story whatever it was it really gives you an edge actually the cool factor the question can you restate the question for me so the question is was my experiences in Brazil and my work in the agriculture field was that randomly chosen for me or was that something that I was interested in before and chose to pursue and that question is yeah so for my program specifically they've now expanded to a few more countries but I chose Brazil as my first country of interest just because I learned a few things about it high school but I was craving a little bit more I was craving I wanted to know what the culture was like I wanted to learn about the people I wanted to learn about their lives just know about their everyday lives and that really caught my attention in terms of the agriculture sector that was something that I've never really explored before as living in such an urban city so something that I've never done before let's take me out into from my comfort zone and put me into my stretch zone like you were talking earlier about how once you're out of that comfort zone that's when you grow and learn the most and everyday in my year was always the best day but I learned from every challenges that I've faced there and that was what I was creating I wanted to be out of the normal everyday life pushing myself to the next level and that led me to the agriculture sector which I learned to love till today were there other options that sort of what were some of the other things that some of your cohort did so some of the other members of my cohort they worked in entrepreneurship some of them worked in environmental conservation another one she really liked animals so she worked in a zoo there and another friend of mine who was more interested in social work was placed in a community center that worked with visually impaired it's like a community center any other questions we have time I think for one more for all of you so the question was before you went on your experience did you speak the local language or did you study or did you study there how was even the language barrier so for before I went to Brazil I did not have any Portuguese experience but I did take Spanish all throughout high school and that really helped in the Portuguese learning once I got there just because in English we don't really have that conjugation of the words like they do in Spanish or Portuguese so having that background Spanish really helped with learning and with my program specifically in the first month of the program it's called in-country orientation so in that very first month you do intensive language training which you go to school for four to five hours a day there's like four to five students in your class and you just learn the language and absorb the culture they take you on a few trips to get you immersed into the community and after that first month and when I arrived at the shuri cane farm we had our own private Portuguese tutor that came to us once a week to help us build our vocabulary there's a lot more it's mostly just conversational anything that I've heard learn in my community that I was in compute I didn't really know about they would clear that up and they would also have a little bit of work for me to improve my name the most important part of being there is just to like I would say vague it but you hear people say something and you like say it back to them but the first time you might say it wrong and they might laugh at you but the second time it'll get better and the third time you're how fluent Portuguese are you now? I'm able to have a proficient conversational course I took Spanish well I'm just out of East Asia there's a strong tourist industry it's really difficult to pick up the languages there but the people you're interacting with like people who work at the hostels or transportation or all the attractions or guys would usually speak because this is always polite but it's still so difficult to learn those and then South America was a lot easier in that sense and that like chicken Spanish and high school a little bit of college a lot of people have and then just there like keep practicing and review before I win and then also what a lot of people do is they offer like one week to one month intensive language courses people will start out their trip with like a week or more of an intensive language course being able to interact with locals and not quite being an outsider and having a larger social sphere than like all the people in the hostel and just to be able to experience the culture as more local and less of an outsider learning some language but there's a lot of resources to different apps and various technological things you're just like sitting in a class or community college or like can help you learn a language of wherever you're going and just learning languages but after college I as I mentioned I went and worked on a farm in Germany and I taught myself some German on the internet and I had done a short language course but that really was nothing so I basically went and not speaking any the part of Germany I lived in almost no one speaks English the people I lived with didn't speak any English but it was just a matter of training them and I basically with all of my set of tours every day I would come back for every meal and just sort of like have to give a report of what I've done and at first that was really hard and it got easier and then I started people to talk about other things and it's I think learning language that was one of the most sort of fulfilling things that I got out of anything I've done and I think that really changes you and actually I think there's a lot of research that can actually really help you succeed in a lot of ways but yeah it's a struggle and it's hard at first but it's so satisfying when you can actually speak to someone and especially if you get to a point where in all communities you start to think in another language which is very daily in the first week but it's quite amazing and also wow it sort of sunk in and you don't even have to think about it anymore I always love surprising the local responding they think that you know and then all of a sudden you respond or the better part is when they've been talking about you it's a lot of work it's always a task well I think that's all the time we have thank you all for coming we'll be around for a couple minutes if you have follow-up questions but again a round of applause for the email line