Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Gap year?

She is welcome to come spend a year with us here in South Africa. She can do self-study courses (we homeschool so she would have time, space, resources etc), she can do loads of service projects - plenty of needs here! She could live with and travel with a family that gets gifted and any other conditions. She could help with my kiddies if she wanted as well with their homeschooling/learning. She could do musical instruments (my boys learn violin and recorder and at least wants to start piano soon), she could travel locally here with us and on her own a bit too if she (and you) felt it safe to do so...

Is the goal for the gap year for college admissions, or is it to take advantage of being young with a bit of extra time, and to enable her to learn and engage herself in something outside the ivory tower?

For me taking the gap year abroad, in which I did no service, was a broadening experience for me as an individual. It does look like doing a year as an exchange student is tough to manage given her medical status, but please don't make the object of a gap year decision all focused on improving the all-important application.

I spent a year in Turkey. I now speak fluent Turkish, a skill that has helped me exactly never. Well, except that I came back with the confidence I could learn just about anything I set my mind to. I came back with a more nuanced appreciation for the world beyond the me-me-me-me. I came back with a sense of independence and personal responsibility that was unmatched by my peers in college, many of which were still older than me.

Three weeks after my return -- at a time I was still dreaming in Turkish -- I was paired with an Armenian room mate, further stretching my world view.

These experiences have made me who I am today.

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.

And what's wrong with accordion??? I played it for SEVEN years! lol ... She's gifted. She'll pick up on it quick. The neighbors will enjoy it

Not a thing-- honest! No, she's really just kidding with us, I think. (We lived in MN for a while, where an accordian rendition of "The Chicken Dance" is pretty much the unofficial state song... so it's a sort of family perverseness that is, er... goading... her into making that kind of statement. I think. Her interest is governed largely by how little her dad and I enjoyed the process of being outsiders to what felt like... well, like a real-life blend of Groundhog Day and Fargo, basically.)

She's (in all seriousness) expressed renewed interest in a string instrument-- like the viola. I still think that the bagpipes would place her in far higher demand... and be much more quirky/esoteric, which appeals to her greatly.


She has also done NaNoWriMo and ScriptFrenzy before, so we know from experience that neither is anything like a year-long or full-time endeavor. At least for her, they aren't.

I'm not sure that she is interested enough in anything but Pathfinder to do any single thing passionately for a full year. (Yeah, just... no-- see above about Minecraft.)

No matter what she chooses she could probably add some volunteer work.

Yes, and I'd advocate community service very strongly as a part of any gap year planning. It just FEELS good, and it's one of those things where perfectionism has very little chance to take root and grow. It's such a nice thing to have that.



I strongly suspect that we'd have a hard time STOPPING our DD from doing 10-15 hours of volunteer time a week. That's about what she does now.

I wonder if she's old enough to certify as a master gardener? Hmm.

Msybe it's just coincidence or a trend, but I keep hearing about even the typically-aged kids finishing h.s. seem to be taking a "gap year" these days. Rotary, AFS, (don't know if your DD will be too young for those) volunteer work and online classes...the kids I know who are doing this are so, so happy and come out of the year having a much better idea of what they want to do with their studies and goals.

Personal bias disclaimer: University was mostly a waste of my time as it taught closed-mindedness and a doctrinaire thinking. Put bluntly, I think the best learning is that which we seek out and design for ourselves.

From this perspective, I'd advocate that your daughter choose a wickedly complex question that she's dying to answer and make that her year. It would be incredibly fulfilling, teach her project management skills, and be an inescapably creative endeavour. Yes, it's completely exploratory, in a way that university never will be.

I'd say multipotentiality in itself is a tremendous blessing, but it can be distorted through self-doubt. I would want to ensure that whatever she does reinforces her values intrinsically so that the year can be applied to any pursuit later. I would also focus on the rarity of the experience to enhance the value of her skillset relative to her peers.

The question is if she will apply to colleges, get in, then defer a year; or if she will finish high school, do the gap year, then apply to colleges. It matters alot the order.
If she is going to finish high school and do a gap year, then apply, you could build into it retaking the SAT or a test like that. Not alot of kids do a gap year before college; you see that more after college when applying for graduate school.
If you just graduate from high school and apply, her application may be stronger if you wait a year after doing something interesting and/or retaking any tests that might need to be improved.