Right-- and I think THAT is really
our ideal-- for her to spend some time... well,
spending "the gift of time" which her 3+ years of acceleration have given her.
On the other hand, we also don't want to propose something that a college will look at and say "Nahhhhh... we aren't going to hold a spot for you for THAT. Apply again when you really want to go to college, okay?"
I mean,
maybe we'll have her do that anyway (that is, be flexible about the fact that she may change her attitude/desires significantly during a gap year, and wish to apply at different colleges at the end of it than at the beginning...)
but it's not necessarily that we're looking to build a college resume. Honestly, that has NEVER been a motivation for us personally, and I don't see that changing.
We're more about just not
hurting college admissions with a gap year.
So. I guess that would be a "no" for "a year spent exploring Minecraft and WoW while I eat pizza and live in the basement, only venturing out after nightfall to hang out with my slacker friends..."
I wish that she COULD do a stint in the Peace Corps. She's
made for that kind of experience, if not for her disability. Oh, and I guess, her age. Right.
We anticipate that she may well want to spend a semester (or a year) abroad at some point in college, so we're not necessarily pushing for that now; the older she is, the easier it will be for her to manage.
She could resurrect her profit-sharing microbusiness and turn it into a NPO. She had talked about that back in middle school.
She could also do a variety of jobshadows; maybe pick four or five disparate careers and research and observe, try some things out.
One of the reasons that I can see a gap year being of tremendous benefit for a HG+ child is
multipotentiality. It's a problem. More life experience can ONLY help there.
