Your family may have genuine and strongly held convictions about the value of graduating from college as soon as possible, getting a job, and establishing yourself as an independent, financially self-sufficient person. These convictions are entirely reasonable, and they may lead your family to feel that taking time off is irresponsible. Your challenge is to articulate exactly what it is that you want to do and why. If you can show your family why you'd be able to take advantage of college more fully at a later point, it will go a long way toward proving that you are not simply being irresponsible.
To show them you're serious about taking time off, take advantage of every possible resource. Talk to your counselors, your friends, your friends' parents. Get the word out. Every person you talk to will have some new information and insights for you. You may have to argue that paying for a year of college tuition when you don't really want to be there is in itself irresponsible. Taking a year off may be the most responsible thing you can do.
The sabbatical tradition grew out of the Judeo-Christian observance of the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week. The day when God rested became a day for people to step away from their work and focus on other things. The Sabbath is designed to rejuvenate and replenish-to bring people back to the rest of the week with a whole new perspective. Taking time off from school can do the same thing for you.
If you're lucky, your parents totally get all of this. But chances are, they probably don't. This is not their fault. Many of them are veterans of the "tune in, turn on, drop out" era where people who took time off either ended up getting drafted to go to Vietnam or volunteered for the other army following the Grateful Dead around the country. But many leave-takers, from Tom Brokaw to Alan Greenspan, did come back to the classroom and accomplished great things after they finished their schooling. Others, like Bill Gates and Michael Dell, never did go back to school after their time off, but we doubt their parents have too many complaints.
Perhaps the best argument for taking time off from college is that people who do take a leave get better grades once they return than people who don't, and they get better jobs after graduation. No, we have no study to back this up. But we do know from personal experience that it's true, and we've confirmed it with overwhelming evidence that's emerged from our interviews with students over the years. Since parents have trouble arguing against activities that lead to better grades and better jobs, you should try to pound this truth home when talking to your family about taking time off.
When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Most eighteen-year-old freshmen arrive at college straight from high. Cut loose for the first time in their lives with no rules or curfew, the possibilities seem limitless. But drinking a lot, staying up late, and sleeping through class the next day is not a recipe for a particularly good report card. In essence, many students take their first year off while still paying full tuition.
Colleges don't want your parents to know that this goes on, which is why college tours always take place during the day. But they've quietly made it clear that they'd prefer it if you went and did something else for a while before showing up on campus. Here's the dean of admissions at Harvard talking in The New York Times: "Most students would be better off it they were able to get some perspective on themselves, their lives, what they hope to accomplish," he says. Is that not emphatic enough for your folks? How 'bout this gem from Princeton's admissions czar, who once told Ron that "if we wanted to pick precisely the wrong age at which to admit students to college, we have it down pat." Brown University's website encourages all interested students to take time off, Tufts's letter to admitted students encourages them not to come for a year . . . and the list goes on and on.
Taking time off will also be an asset when you do graduate from college. Students often complain that it is difficult to market themselves to potential employers when all they have to show for themselves is a college transcript, a stint on the student council, and a few summer jobs in the mall. But imagine an employer with a stack of one hundred resumes. The first ninety-nine of them come from students who have spent sixteen straight years in school. Then the employer gets to yours, a person who's proven that they're capable of planning a yearlong project and has exhibited maturity and independence. Whose resume would catch your eye?
Time off may also give you an opportunity to investigate some of your career interests. Even if you decide that the line of work you have explored has nothing to do with how you want to spend the rest of your life, you still will have accomplished something very important. But more likely, if you pursue something that interests you, you'll end up being successful and will pursue something similar after you graduate. People who take time off end up with great jobs more often than not, and we don't believe that it's just a coincidence.
If the idea of taking time off strikes your parents as something completely outside the norm, they may be surprised to learn that time off is the rule, not the exception, for students in most of the rest of the civilized world. We spoke to several foreign students who were astounded by how anxious American students are to go straight to college and get out as fast as they can. In England, almost all students who study at the university level spend a sabbatical year away from the classroom after they finish secondary school. At one point in 2000, the two most famous college students in the world at the time were both taking time off simultaneously; Prince William spent a year traveling before starting his university studies, and Chelsea Clinton took a semester off to hit the campaign trail with her mother and enjoy one last hurrah at the White House.
The evidence for the value of taking time off is overwhelming, yet your parents may still worry about how it looks. There is a certain prestige for them in sending their children to college. They don't want to look as if they've raised a slacker. When the neighbors ask where Susie is going to college, telling them that she is at State U. majoring in business sounds better than trying to explain why she's "dropped out" of school for a while.
Yet these are the same parents who have probably reminded you again and again that they wanted to give you every opportunity in life. Well, the opportunity to go to college is not fleeting. None of these schools are going anywhere. You won't miss anything by not going to college next year. But you might miss out on something great by rushing to college right away.
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