Gap years yield student maturity

If awarded the opportunity, who would turn down an all-expenses-paid trip to Germany? The thought occurred to freshman Valerie Caldas in her senior year of high school, when she won a scholarship by the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Program to study and take on internships in various German cities. After working in a Waldorf kindergarten, helping in hospital wards and undergoing months of intensive German language training, Caldas is now back from her year abroad to continue with her formal education.

Caldas is one of 29 students in the current freshman class who chose to defer their offer of admission to Hopkins last year and take what is termed a "gap year" between high school and college.

The number of students choosing to defer their admission to the University is slowly growing, even at schools such as Hopkins where many students follow pre-professional guidelines and have specific career goals already in sight.

"The trend is increasing. It used to be we'd have five or 10, but now we have 40 or 50 a year," John Latting, director of admissions, said.

"Thirty-seven are currently deferred this year. Those are ones who have applied for deferment and who

are granted deferment. In most cases they are granted deferment, as long as they provide a reasonable explanation," Deferral Coordinator Kieran Keefe, said.

While most students spend the year abroad or traveling, a small group of students must defer for financial reasons or for compulsory military service. For some, it is then challenging to return to school after the gap in their education.

Freshman Yi Chung, who was obliged to serve in the Singaporean army for two and a half years, says he would not have deferred had it not been compulsory. After years of learning to shoot rifles, camping in the jungle and serving on a suicide intervention hotline at the army's counseling center, Chung says he had trouble re-entering a school environment.

"Well it's really, really tough for me right now. I mean, [after] two to three years of not only not studying, but generally not using very much of my brain. In the army, it's `Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir,' and suddenly I'm doing calc III here when I don't really even remember my basic calculus."

However in addition to his military service, Chung also had the opportunity to learn scuba diving during his two years off from school. "I picked up scuba diving and worked as a dive master for a local dive company, bringing people around for dives around the region," he said.

For Caldas, as for many other students, the choice was completely voluntary and ultimately provided her with what she described as "a new perspective on education." After years at a rigorous boarding school where she was already taking college-level classes, Caldas said she felt drowned in her schoolwork. Staying with an immigrant working class host-family and experiencing weeks of various menial labor coupled with language training, helped to give Caldas a renewed focus that she felt was crucial before continuing with her education. The program, which included two months of language training in Bonn, two months of study in a German high school and seminars in Berlin, also gave Caldas proficiency in a third language, aside from French, which she had learned from her mother. Once she had attained adequate fluency in German, Caldas pursued various internships.

"It made me realize that I can't waste this education. It's not that I didn't want to continue and go to college; I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do before I went straight into college," she said.

Sophomore Dan Furman made use of his gap year teaching English in Northern India and China.

Furman spent three and a half months teaching English with the Louisiana Himalaya Association (LHA) in Dharamsala, India, a town with a large population of Tibetan refugees including the Dalai Lama. The LHA is a grass-roots organization run by volunteers on donation dollars dedicated to providing free services, such as English language training, to Tibetan refugees as well as native Indian residents. Furman later taught English to college students in China, staying with a Chinese couple who lived 40 minutes outside of Beijing.

"Higher education is still very exclusive in China. What a lot of people do is self-study, study the curriculum of their major, and then take the exams at a really reputable school. Those are the kids that I taught conversational English to," he said.

Although the cost of both trips came out of his pocket, Furman says his principle expense was airfare.

"In India, I shared a room with my friend and the room was like four dollars a day and we split it. And then it was another two dollars a day for food," he said.

"You should go to parts of the world that are said to be underdeveloped and see for yourself. You see how much you have to give just in terms of the education that you've received in the States," Furman offered.

Caldas agreed saying that her gap year experience in Germany gave her a valuable perspective, but warned students choosing to study abroad to stay focused.

"Don't forget that education is the most important thing and when you're off, that's just another part of your education," she said.