Claire - 00:00
Hey guys, welcome back to another video. My name is Claire and today I want to tell you about three things that I wish I knew going into my Gap Year.
Now I've been on my gap year for seven months so far and I've been having a really great time, but I do have to admit there have been some ups and downs that I could have been more prepared for had I known what they were.
So, the first thing was being away from a structured environment that was school. I was not prepared for being outside of school and being in an environment where I chose the structure totally.
Claire - 00:40
Lately I've been doing a lot better for myself because I realized that and you know, I started defining my structure and making a good plan to get my work done, but I did initially really struggle with, you know, not being in a structured environment of school.
So I actually made a full video about this. You can check it out here, but yeah, that was the first thing that I found really, really difficult was not being in that school structure environment.
Especially when I wasn't working a job like it was just yeah, it was just very difficult to get anything like my passion projects done even though I had all this time.
So the second thing which I know is not just me is, you know, on a Gap Year it can be really difficult to make some friends. If you're like me and you've just graduated from high school, then all of your friends are at university, you know, or the majority of them.
Claire - 01:33
And for me, like moving to a different country where I didn't know anyone other than my boyfriend, it was kind of a lonely experience to be honest. I'm really lucky that I had my boyfriend there for company, we get along super great and we spend a lot of time together.
But as you guys know, it's great to have other like interactions with people other than only one person. So I found, like you know, going out there like doing some skating, getting to know people out, skating, looking at, starting the Gapper Connect Discord Server like I've found a lot of company in you know, meeting other people who have taken Gap Years.
So that was the other thing that I found a bit difficult was the lack of being in school where you're surrounded by people all the time, like it's a very different change.
Claire - 02:23
But the thing about a Gap Year is that there is the possibility to make so many friends if that's what you're looking for, as long as you put yourself out there.
So the thing I also wasn't prepared for is the amount of things that are changing throughout the year. You know, in school you know what's gonna happen.
Claire - 02:39
You know that, well my courses are going to change midway throughout the year, so I'm going to have to do biology and chemistry during the second half of my year.
But for a Gap Year, this isn't always the way it goes, things change! For example, you know I got a job this summer, but I didn't want to continue doing the job, so I just kind of quit because it wasn't working out for me.
Basically things change and I wasn't exactly prepared for that because if you're like me and they're very abrupt changes, then you can get really overwhelmed by those changes and I think giving yourself time to like let it soak in and reminding yourself that you know this is my gap year, this is where I get to try different things and this is where I get to experiment.
Claire - 03:27
If you remind yourself that then that can really help ease the stresses that the fast paced nature of the Gap Year can have.
If you've also struggled with these things in your Gap Year, feel free to let me know in the comments and if there are more things that you have struggled with, chances are I've also struggled with them as well.
So let me know down in the comments if there's any ideas that you have about this video.
If you enjoyed listening to me speak about what I struggled with during my gap year, why not leave a like on the video? If you want to hear more about Gap Year content, subscribe to the Canadian Gap your association YouTube channel.
Take care, bye!