1. Finding your passion. Or reaffirm your passion.
Gap years are usually taken after graduating high school, junior college or polytechnic, before the start of university. However, some do take it after university, before starting their first job. Anyhow, it is perfectly fine either way, as long as you make the most out of your time.
I am personally on my 2nd gap year after graduating junior college. I’ve always wanted to study veterinary medicine and eventually be a veterinarian. Due to how expensive veterinary school is, I needed to ensure I will make the right decision in the long term. I did try out different jobs before sticking to my veterinary nursing job for nearly 2 years now. I interned at a human general practice clinic and job shadowed dentists in a dental clinic. However, I realised that the veterinary field gave me the most fulfilment and aligned most with my values.
Gap years are the best time to try out different career options and experience what life would be like for you in the career. It could be a temporary full time job, part time job, job shadowing or volunteering, make the best use of the time you have at the job to take up new opportunities and ask questions. You never know until you try. Find out whether the job is better or worse than you thought it would be, clarify assumptions you had about the career, experience the good and the bad in the job. Find out exactly whether you are the kind to be satisfied with a repetitive job scope or a constantly stimulating job with challenges and learning opportunities within the day. Time is not money and money doesn’t buy you happiness. Know what is enough. Value the things that are most important to you. Ask yourself, if this is what you would be doing for the next 20 years of your life, would you be happy or satisfied?
As you try out different jobs, below are the question you can try to ask yourself:
- What are the things that are most important in your life? What do you value most?
- What are the main things you would ultimately want to achieve in your life?
- Do you prefer a constant change in your work environment or a repetitive one?
- What does this job entail? What is expected of you?
- What are the long term job prospects in terms of career progression and future demand for your job?
- What are the good things about this job? Does it align with your life purpose or values?
- What are the bad things about this job? Are you able to improve it or deal with it your way?
- How are the professionals dealing with the bad? Is it really true that what most people think is bad is not actually true for you?
- Is it financially practical? Can my school fees debt be repaid within 3-5 years of working?
Besides going hands-on trying different jobs, you can also do online career guidance quizzes and forms to find what aligns with your values and personality. Take some time to do them, who knows, you might find your life-long career which you love!
After you’ve decided you found your passion, it is ultimately working towards it. Do things which align with your values, that will lead you towards your goals. Your focus should be enjoying the process of reaching your goals and not being too uptight with achieving it. Always stay present. It is okay to move on from one job to another (or a project to another) to gain skills and experience to ultimately reach your goals. However, never quit just because it is difficult or that you are afraid. Quit only if the thing you are doing does not align with your values.
After working in the veterinary field for 1.5 years, I know that I am still passionate about being a veterinarian. I moved on from a small animal practice to another small animal practice which sees more variety of animal species and critical cases. I am also starting on a specialist diploma to further my knowledge in this field as I reapply again to veterinary school next year. This makes up for about 3 gap years before I start veterinary school. To be very honest, I do think about the time I am and will be spending just to become a veterinarian. Nonetheless, to remind myself, in the long run of 20-30 years in this industry as a veterinarian, the 3 gap years would really be nothing. I just need to enjoy these gap years before the rigour starts when I eventually become a veterinarian.
2. Learn a useful skill.
Gap year is the best time to learn something which you never had the chance to. You can find something which interests you and aligns with your values. Or it could just be something you want to try which you think might pique your interest.
Technical skills which are useful could be using excel, coding, investing, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) skills and more. These can be learnt by attending workshops, getting certification, or reading books. You can also look into improving soft skills such as public speaking, communication, leadership skills, entrepreneurship. These can be learnt through workshops and books. Ultimately, the best way to learn would be putting yourself out there, building a community and gaining experience working with others on a project.
I took up investing because I really believe it is an extremely important skill to have to lead a financially independent life. I started with attending online courses and talks. I have also been reading investing books. Though many terms are new to me and difficult to understand, I believe that over time I will get the hang of it and be financially independent. Reading investment and self-improvement books have really changed the way I look at money. Being financially independent is very different from being rich. Rich is a subjective term. A person with $1 million may be considered rich to some but poor to others. Financial independence means having a passive income greater than your spending.
I took up coding as I believe that it will be helpful to me in the future if I want to build a website, an application or improve on my blog. It could also be a useful skill to have as a backup career option because it opens up to many job opportunities. Coding also trains our brain to think logically to problem-solve which can be a handy skill to have in many situations. Furthermore, I personally find coding fun as I enjoy the satisfaction when I finally crack the code!
3. Great time to build good habits and routines for the long term.
Gap year is a great time to really focus and work on improving yourself. It is really important to use your time wisely as there is less external accountability you can rely on. Unlike in school or officially working, there is no fixed schedule to follow. You are in control of your time and you choose what to have in your schedule. This is when you learn to account for yourself or find ways to have external accountability to ensure you complete tasks.
Scheduling is really important. Based on findings, in developed countries, less than half of the people have a schedule. Scheduling helps us plan our time better. It allows us to have a clearer picture of how we spend our time and adjust accordingly. We need to ensure that we do things which align with our values. I like to plan my schedule by the week. I will try not to change my daily schedule unless something unexpected comes up. I link my roles to my goals. Example, my role as a veterinary nurse will link to my goal of creating a set of nursing notes for my colleagues. And so on for my roles as a daughter/sister, friend, personal growth etc. With regards to scheduling, I really recommend reading 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey. Reading Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin would also help you achieve the things on your to-do list using the tendencies framework. It is the book to help you find your tendency and methods to help you achieve your goals in ways that best suit you.
There is more time for you to incorporate new habits/routines, build, reflect and improve on them. With more time, you can continuously reflect and refine them to find out which ones best align with your values and bring out the best in you. You can try little challenges and trials, journal to reflect on how you felt with and without the routines. I tried meditation and gave up in less than a week. With more time, I decided to try it again, and took the time to reflect on how I felt with and without it. It has since been part of my daily morning routine for the past 3 months, together with my short morning yoga stretch routine.
Having a solid routine and mastering the art of scheduling would really propel you forward in the long term. It is really a snowball effect. Once a habit/routine is built in you, you would do it without thinking. There would be no need to use up your energy in procrastination and to make a decision, you just do it. You would have more brain capacity to make bigger and more impactful decisions instead of the little gritty ones.
4. Do something out of your comfort zone.
You would have more time to try out something you never thought you would. It could be something that you chanced upon during your gap year or through people you know. It could be starting your own pet bakery, running your own courses, modelling, blogging or vlogging.
Writing was never on my mind at all before I started on my gap year. I only started blogging in my second gap year, from following Youtuber Ali Abdaal and his recommendation to read Show Your Work by Austin Kleon. One of the biggest takeaways I got from the book was that it is perfectly fine (if not better) to be an amatuer to share. As long as it adds value to someone out there, just share it. It definitely takes time to reach a quality level of writing but so long as I take baby steps to write weekly, I would be able to reach there. For now, my focus would be consistency rather than quality. It is because I have greater control over how frequently I post rather than how well I write based on the readers’ opinions.
Putting ourselves out there is something many people find too scary. People rather stay safe than take some risks to gain something even greater. It is short term thinking. They are afraid of people’s opinions and scrutiny. They are worried that their ‘weakness would be exposed for the world to see, they are afraid that people would not like their work and that their time and effort would be wasted. But really, does it actually happen? Why not think about when people actually praise your work, saying that it actually adds value to their life. However, in reality, people on the internet can be nicer and more supportive than you actually think. The internet news and gossip about hate comments are always sensationalised, with little regard to the many supportive words of netizens out there and the valuable online communities built as people share their work.
Think for yourself what the worst case scenario would be for you. Then think what the best case scenario would be for you. Have a scale of 1 to 10. 1 being nothing and 10 being permanently life-changing, our so-called worst-case scenario might have a temporary impact of 3 or 4 which can be recovered back to square one with a little help. Keep in mind that this is the one-in-a-million disaster nightmare. On the other hand, our best-case scenario or even a probable-case scenario would easily have a permanent 9 or 10 positive life-changing effect. I learnt this scale from reading the 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss.
Show your work. If you have not tried, you never know. Then be consistent.
5. Contribute to the greater good of your community.
Volunteering has been part of our Singapore schools’ curriculum to cultivate good values. However, most volunteer stints are really short 1 or 2 days trips to an elderly home or distribution of care packs to the less fortunate families or litter picking. There are rarely any follow up afterwards. I really appreciate that schools in Singapore do give us many opportunities to find value and purpose in our lives. Nonetheless, it is ultimately our responsibility to follow up and find our value in our society.
Gap year is the time to find something you are truly passionate about and want to make a difference to. It could also be the chance for you to find your passion when you have no clue what you truly love. One advice would be to do your best in whatever you choose to take up. Only after reflecting that you realise it isn’t for you then be honest with yourself and the people around you, and make the necessary changes, be it leaving the place you are volunteering at.
I’ve volunteered at various places such as at the horse stable, cat shelter and dog shelter but found out what I love is the mental stimulation in a small animal clinic. I’ve volunteered at elderly homes, a special needs school and even teaching the less fortunate children in Chiang Mai. However, I found out what I love is the close connection I have with a boy in the autism spectrum and his family. I really believe in the Son-Rise Program run by the family for their son. I realised that I believe in the quality of help I give (be it just 1 person) rather than the number of people I help. Hopefully, with the skills gained from this close connection I have, I would be able to give more to more people in the future.
6. Take a good break/rest and new hobbies.
This is the perfect time to experiment with your leisure time. Trying something new may stimulate your mind, body or spirit — the 3 components of health — in ways you never thought you would. I know it sounds a bit strange but it may well be true once you try it.
Let’s talk about our minds. We, people, need a lot of mental stimulation such as through problem solving, social interaction and creative thinking. It is just bred in our human nature, just like how we need food to survive or we will starve to death. It would be great to have the stimulation in our job. However, especially when we take a gap year, the work we do in our gap year may not be the thing we do in the long term. Thus, to find other forms of mental stimulation outside of the work we do would be really important. When things do not go as planned at work or study, what can we rely on outside of it? We can look to our hobbies, our productive leisure time, to soothe our minds in order to think clearer and better, to propel us forward.
For mental stimulation, we can engage in learning new skills. It could be hard skills such as coding and writing. Or creative skills such as script writing, filming, video editing and photography. These skills can be very useful and can come in handy whenever you need it next time. It could even help you progress in your current job or make it easier for you when you want to switch your career. It’ll open many opportunities for you. You never know where the skills might bring you.
Next, taking care of our physical body is also one of the most important things for our health, which is often neglected. Exercise and diet go hand in hand to keep our body healthy.
We need 3 main forms of exercise — cardio, strength and flexibility. And we need to target each of them weekly. I do high intensity interval training (HIIT) to target cardio and strength, yoga to target flexibility and strength, and weights/push-ups to target strength. All done in the comfort of my own home and alone. Some people need external accountability to ensure they turn up, such as joining a gym membership, having a gym buddy. Some like to add some fun to their exercise routine by engaging in a sport. Experiment to see what best suits you to ensure exercise is part of your weekly routine.
There are many ‘diets’ advertised on many media platforms but finding one that is sustainable and best suits you is key. Snacking is a rabbit hole many people might fall into and find it very hard to get out. To prevent myself from snacking unnecessarily, I have been monitoring and planning my meals daily. Before I start my day, I plan and write down what I would eat in a day for my 3 meals and my snacks. I also treat each meal as a new meal, meaning if I ‘cheated’ and ate something more than what I planned then in my next meal I would start afresh. It would prevent me from saying “oh, since I cheated in my previous meal, I might as well cheat for the rest of the day, my diet should start tomorrow instead.” It takes practice to incorporate healthy eating in our lives. It is important that we are not too hard on ourselves to prevent us from getting back into the cycle of over-eating.
Lastly, spiritual health is another component of health that is not commonly talked about. Gap year is thus the time to touch on it. You would find it to be impactful if not life-changing. You may engage in calming and spiritually enriching activities like meditation and yoga. You may also volunteer and contribute to your society.
Go on, take the time to find what brings the best in you — mentally, physically and spiritually. Create sustainable habits and routines, not short term goals. Celebrate yourself for the very thing you did, not just reaching your short term goals. Reward yourself with how you feel with your intrinsic motivation and not extrinsic motivation. For example, when I write, I celebrate myself by feeling good that I did not spend the time scrolling through social media. However, some people might reward themself writing a blog post by eating a bag of chips or watching a movie. Whatever you do, be it exercising, volunteering or learning new skills, remember to also start small, give yourself little celebrations on your way to where you want to be. Don’t forget to find fun and play in whatever you do, afterall, that’s what living is.
Some people may be afraid that if they take too long a break it would be very difficult for them to get back into the rigour of studying or working. If you really had a good break, your mind and body would really appreciate it when there is a change in your schedule (inline with your values and purpose). Your mind would be hungry for knowledge and your body would be grateful for a change in pace and rigour of your schedule. After spending time to rest and find out exactly where your passion lies, studying or working (in your preferred field) would be a lot more productive. Doing something inline with your passion would not feel like a chore but truly enjoyable. With sufficient rest, it will propel you forward to be even more productive, just like a well-used car with its engine freshly revamped.