Gap year

 Here is a two part blog from a former student on her taking a gap year.

I always intended to graduate college in eight semesters. No gap year or semester, just take classes until I could finally be free of school forever. Then Covid-19 happened and everything moved to Zoom. Many of the most rewarding and engaging aspects of the college experience completely disappeared, and I was miserable. Halfway through Fall 2020, I accepted a Spring 2021 co-op that was like the light at the end of a tunnel.

Though I was excited, there were a lot of negative aspects to consider: an extra semester in school (and paying extra rent), graduating after all my friends were gone, and getting a later start on “the rest of my life.” My mom was also worried about me struggling to get back into the swing of academics afterward, losing those months of full-time income, and just doing something that wasn’t so clearly mapped out.

I still feel taking this internship was so much more valuable than what I could’ve learned in the classroom. There are plenty of articles out there about the merits of internships and having work experience in your field before graduating, so I’m not going to rehash those specific benefits. However, co-ops during a semester offer the opportunity to work on long-term projects, as many of them will run anywhere from four to six months and can extend into the summer for eight months total. This gives you more time to become confident in performing your job, enhance your skill set so you’re entrusted with more important or complicated tasks, and allow you to network with more people in the company.

Another benefit of taking a co-op, whether or not you need to delay your graduation, is getting an extra internship experience before going to work full-time. If, like me, you’re considering a wide spectrum of fields, you’ll have an extra opportunity to do a trial run in one of those fields. Some careers require graduate school, certification, or a series of exams in order to break into the industry. The field I’m currently working in requires multiple exams with hundreds of hours of studying even before finishing the degree, so it is helpful for me to learn now if the studying is worth my time or if I’d rather pursue a different career. I can also shape my coursework and extracurricular opportunities depending on what I learn about myself.

Also, although many employers likely won’t care how many internships you had as long as you have had one, having multiple gives you the benefit of the most prestigious one and/or the one most relevant to the job opening. In my experience (and my friends’ experiences as well), it was much easier to get responses from places with more fulfilling and coveted intern programs once I already had one internship under my belt.