University tutor says - Do it! (Gap Years in general)

Member Name: grimalkin21

Product:	Gap Years in general
Date:	19/08/00 (92 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: many and varied

Disadvantages: none really

One place that students don't often seem to go for advice about gap years are universities, which, very generally speaking, take a very positive view of gap years - with the proviso that students should do something useful. Useful doesn't mean boring - backpacking around the world certainly counts as useful, sitting in front of daytime soaps, even for a would-be TV studies student, does not!
Why are we keen for you to take a year out? Well they say that travel broadens the mind, and my personal experience is that it certainly does. Not that travelling is the only option at all. Taking a job for a year, doing voluntary work etc etc all help to give students a much broader world view. And it certainly helps on the CV when it comes to getting a 'proper' job later on.
One of the reasons that mature students tend to do well at university is that they just have so much more information about the real world, which they can bring to play in their studies. Taking time out in the 'real world', away from the artificial envronment that is full-time education, helps bring some very different perspectives to bear on education.
Also, an extra year just growing up van be of enormous benefit to some teenagers. Some students have a traumatic time at university, perhaps especially the big universities, at the beginning just because they're not used to being away from home and the environment they've grown up in. Coping with that, plus the pressure of study, can all be too much and they end up dropping out. If only they'd left it another year, perhaps 'practised' being away from home and all that is familiar, university would have been much less of a hurdle.

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