The gap year: 10 benefits and advantages for your life

The gap year concept may not be very popular for those who confuse life with work. work, but the truth is that it is one more resource that can help us both to gain health and to evolve in what staff.

Unfortunately, sometimes the sabbatical year is confused with simple inactivity and the inability to plan a viable work project (the latter being, by the way, something that does not depend entirely on willpower or effort). No: spending a few months without paid work or receiving formal training does not have to be a waste of time.

We'll see now the main benefits that people who decide to take a gap year can enjoy before beginning a university degree or definitively entering the labor market.

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The benefits of taking a gap year

Going from a period of activity to a stage in which free time predominates can become cause certain problems related to the lack of planning and the mismanagement of the expectations.

But that, in many cases, is more than offset by the advantages that the gap year offers.

1. Time to train yourself in a self-taught way

The majority of university degrees or regulated postgraduate training is oriented towards specializations that, in one way or another, limit the range of learning that we can opt for. This is positive in many aspects, since becoming an expert in something requires the need to focus on a specific field of knowledge.

The gap year allows us get out of this dynamic and leave time to learn on our own or with the help of face-to-face or online courses. The duration of one year allows us to delve into a new topic enough to continue training in it in a more fluid way when we start to combine it with work.

2. Traveling, the great gift for the senses

To travel well it is necessary to have time to discover all the secrets of what you are visiting. The gap year gives us the opportunity to take several trips, either using money saved or turning to volunteer programs who offer free stay in exchange for several hours of work per week.

3. The possibility of learning languages

Another reason why the gap year It is not the same as spending all day doing nothing is that it leaves us a wide margin to learn languages.

In fact, if we put enough time and effort into it, the results after spending about 11 or 12 months learning a language starting from from the most complete ignorance they tend to be surprising, especially if we have already mastered one that is similar to this in grammar or vocabulary.

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4. you can meet more people

Sometimes we forget about one of the most important aspects of life that is reduced when we work or study intensively: social relationships.

Either to network from a professional perspective or to extend the circle of friends, the sabbatical year allows us to enjoy perfect moments and spaces to get in touch with people with interests similar to ours. Attending festivals, conferences, meeting up... there are many suitable contexts for socializing.

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5. It drives us to take control of our lives.

Although it may seem strange, getting out of the circuit of formal training and full-time work helps us gain power over our actions and decisions. This is because for the first time we have almost total freedom to prioritize objectives and draw up plans, something that does not happen in the other two scenarios.

6. Offers an oasis of family conciliation

If for years communication within the family has suffered due to the lack of time together, this is the ideal time to reconcile or simply get back in touch and strengthen the affective bond that unites us with our fathers, mothers, brothers, etc.

Before you take a break, remember…

Now that we have seen the advantages and benefits associated with the gap year, it is good to review the aspects that must be taken into account before opting for this option.

Mainly, efforts must be made to prepare for the sabbatical year in two ways: save and plan.

Having an economic cushion is necessary even in those cases in which we are not willing to carry out projects that require large expenses, because in case of needing money for unforeseen events, we are more exposed by not having a part-time job complete.

On the other hand, planning with a reasonable amount of time is essential because if we do not do so, we will possibly spend the year wasting many weeks and simply "embedding" some significant events into our calendar from time to time, without forming a cohesive whole. This last option is an incorrect way of imagining the gap year, a period characterized not by leisure or rest time, but for the freedom to choose where we want to go.