10 Fulfilling Activities To Do During Your Gap Year
10 Fulfilling Activities To Do During Your Gap Year. A gap year offers you the opportunity to gain skills and experiences, while giving you time to reflect and focus on what you want to do next. It’s really important to form a plan of what you will do for the year, no matter what your gap year idea is, and you need to start planning well in advance.
1. Learn A New Language
Becoming totally fluent in another language is one of those great passion projects you can actually accomplish during your gap year. Who wouldn’t want to learn how to say ‘I love you’ or even just ‘Pass the salt’ in French, Spanish or Japanese? Learning another language opens up a new world of self-expression, friendships, and new films, books, and music to binge on.
2. Get Work Experience
Complete an internship in a vocational field you’d like to explore. You’ll learn if this is really the type of work for you before you commit fully to it and you’ll gain some work experience that will serve you well wherever you might end up. What’s not so clear is how you can still have some fun while working. Taking your internship abroad allows you to balance your need to keep your career on track while still having the opportunity to see and experience a lot of other cool new things at the same time.
3. Release Your Creative Juices
If you aren’t a student specializing in the arts, you might not have been able to develop your creative side during high school due to other academic pressures. This is a shame because having a creative outlet helps improve performance for professionals in just about any field. That is why using your gap year to explore your artistic side, even if you do not consider this a career option, will provide short-term satisfaction as well as long-term productivity benefits
4. Go On An Adventure
What’s the point of a gap year if you are not going to be adventurous? Maybe you are a fierce adrenaline junkie and work and learning does not cut it for you. You might need to do something more exciting for your gap year. While professional diving isn’t technically considered an extreme sport, mastering technical skills that allow you to explore mysterious landscapes most people never will never see, appeals to most with an adventurous spirit.
5.Take Up A Part-time Course
Why not take the opportunity to try something new? You could take up a new language, learn how to program, try a new sport or music instrument, or learn a new practical skill, such as mechanics, carpentry, or cookery.
6. Volunteer
Support a worthwhile cause and gain valuable experience. You could take part in a wildlife conservation project, teach children in an orphanage, or help build a school in a third world country. While it is exciting to volunteer abroad, it’s likely that there are plenty of organizations closer to home that need your help.
7. Teach English In Another Country
When you can’t think of any useful talents or skills you may have, ask yourself, “Do I know how to speak English?”. If you answered yes then how about spending your gap year teaching it to someone else who can’t? More English teachers are needed in countries like Thailand, Cambodia, France, China and Nepal.
8. Become An AU Pair
Many young people are making money by being nannies and babysitters abroad, As an Au pair You will be living and working overseas full-time in a family environment, looking after their children. There are endless au pairing agencies that can locate you in South Africa, or anywhere in the world
9. Take A Tour
If the main focus of your gap year is to see new places and meet new people, take a tour and get to know some of the most beautiful cities in the world. Whilst volunteering or employment based travel sets you up in one place for 12 months, this is a fantastic opportunity to see as many places as possible. It’s a fantastic way to make friends and you’ll get the best of city life, beach, bars and nightclubs and everything else in between.
10. Make Your Own Plan
A gap year can be whatever you want it to be. For some people, an organized program through an agency can set the mind at ease, for others, complete freedom is the way forward. If you are looking at breaking away from anything even slightly resembling an institution then maybe a ‘free traveling gap year’ is what you need. The beauty of this is that you have complete freedom and independence to do what you want and go where you want when you want to.
