Beyond the Beaten Path: Taking a Gap Year, Starting College, and Transferring to UMass Amherst
By Piper Bo
Content
I always used to love those career-talk days in school. Albeit, not for the reasons my teachers probably wanted me to. The guest speakers would walk in with their pamphlets, or packets, or PowerPoint slides, and all I’d have to do was sit back, relax, and give the same answers I’d had set in stone for years:
I was going to attend a very specific school, in a very specific city, and study a very specific subject.
(I’ll give you a little hint. Stone, when you really get down to it, is no more infallible than anything else. Or perhaps I’m just really, really not cut out for a construction job.)
I am of the opinion that there is a very large difference between looking at something from a distance and actually being right there and seeing it, and closer inspections can often reveal details we hadn’t noticed before. So senior year rolled around, and the simple non sequitur of ‘I’m going to go to college after this’ began to grow, and morph, and twist, until it looked and felt a lot more like an uncomfortable, looming, ever-present inevitability.
Oh, god. I’m going to go to college after this.
We get this idea into our heads, sometimes, that there is only really one ‘correct’ path to a particular stage or destination in life, and any deviations from this are precisely that; deviations. Detours, momentarily diverting you from the road you should be on before ultimately slotting you right back on track.
And while, conceptually, I feel like a lot of us understand that this isn’t necessarily true, this understanding alone isn’t always enough to shake the feeling that’s gotten its grubby little hands all over that persistent little voice in the back of our minds.
Taking a Gap Year in South Korea
Fresh out of high school, and really not feeling like I wanted to go to college, I took a gap year to go live on my own and study at a non-credit language program on the other side of the world, right in the heart of Seoul, South Korea.
Now. Looking at that, I’m entirely aware that it seems absurd to propose that going halfway across the world by myself was the less scary option over going to college for me — but it was! All I can offer up as an explanation is that I just really, genuinely wanted to go, which is honestly the only sort of explanation that you need, even if it doesn’t immediately seem like it.
But as much as I was enjoying Seoul, a part of me still couldn’t shake what I felt I was supposed to be doing, and ‘needed’ to be doing once the year had passed and I was back in the US again. I went and applied to some US colleges while I was there because I wasn’t eager to see what would happen if August came around and I hadn’t.
This is, in hindsight, quite obviously not the sort of mindset you want to be going into such an enormous decision with. Especially when you contrast it with how I felt while living in Korea, or even how I felt when I was making the decision to go over there in the first place. Because that was, and still is, one of the best things I could’ve ever done for myself.
Korea granted me a wide variety of new experiences, but the most novel of them all, I think, was noticing the person I was becoming when I was there.
I wasn’t just learning a new language, I was learning a new language while doing things I’d previously been terrified to do in the one I’d actually grown up speaking. In the US, my anxiety had clung to me like a vice, but now here I was walking twenty-five thousand steps a day just to greet all of my favorite café workers, and jumping at any chance to help a stranger that looked like they needed it with skills and knowledge I was confident in having.
And while it’d be nice to end this article right here, tie it all up with a neat, rhetorical bow and be done, there’s a bit more that needs to be said before we can finish.
Because the funny thing about living in another country, really, is that, sometimes, you aren’t quite sure how to bring the person you became while you were there back home with you.
That’s just it, though.
In Korea, there was this old, slightly precarious bridge lining a road up in the mountains that I used to walk across every day. One afternoon, I stopped and realized that the person walking across it the day before had felt incredibly, devastatingly lonely. Now, she finds the silence accompanying her comforting, and relaxing.
And still, the bridge remains as old as ever.
So, really, the country likely isn’t the problem.
No time to fully think about all of that, though, because — look! College is up next, right back where it’s supposed to be! Off you go!
Taking A First Step: Starting the College Journey
When people ask me if I was worried at all about living abroad for so long, I usually chuckle, and tell them that I was more scared about having to navigate the airport by myself. This is both true, and also another way of saying that my desire to go was so strong it had kind of just completely superseded everything else.
My feelings about college, on the other hand, could not have been more different if they’d tried. But they hadn’t even been feelings of anxiousness or fear — which, while unpleasant, can also sometimes be indications that the very scary choice you’re about to make is still very much the right one. I was more…going through the motions. I need to do this anyway, so what does it really matter if I feel a certain sort of way about it? What am I gonna do, not go?
Since the title of this article refers to transferring…I don’t think I need to explain that my first attempt at school here didn’t turn out very well.
The longer I was at my old college, the more I began to get the sense that it was really not the program or place for me — which honestly shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise, because I’d picked my major entirely based on the assumption that I wouldn’t do very well in the subject from my original list I was more passionate about (a decision I now want to go and (lovingly) kick my past self for, goodness) — but I had been scared to actually go and cement that true, final decision to leave.
I was at my old school for less than a semester. Some of the transfer friends I’ve made here were in the same boat, but they’d also all been ready and prepared to change schools by the time spring rolled around, and had jumped right from one to the next.
In my case, my single gap year had suddenly stretched into two. And I spent a really, really long time at home. Though I still don’t like to admit it, this was probably the best thing I could’ve done for myself. I grabbed a proverbial shovel, planted my feet down, and spent a good chunk of those months digging out the person I discovered myself to be in Seoul, despite the now 7,000 mile difference. Because if I can find pieces of Korea within the same four walls of my bedroom every day, then I can find them anywhere.
My decision to give college another go was not heralded by any large, earth-shattering revelations, nor was it brought upon by some sort of dramatic, life-altering experience. Instead, it was something far more simple, and yet no less momentous — in its own, quiet sort of way.
Re-Finding Myself and Then Finding a New School
One afternoon, I noticed that my thoughts of going back to school, instead of being immediately overtaken by hesitation and worry, were now the other way around.
I loved studying and learning, back in Seoul. That had to have come from somewhere, and it certainly wasn’t the lacquer used on the desks in my classroom. Why should I let one bad experience while majoring in something that didn’t truly suit me temper that down? After all, thoughts of what ‘could’ happen carry no weight but the amount you give to them.
I think the fact that this moment was so largely uneventful means that I truly can look at myself and say that I’ve changed, because the decision had been spurred on by nothing more than my own, everyday thoughts. The smallest of weights added, day by day, are now enough to tip the scale.
And now I’m here! I successfully transferred to UMass. I’m studying both what I’ve always wanted to and an entirely new passion I discovered while abroad. I've got a job that lets me share all of this in this way in the first place — and I haven’t been on the beaten path in a long, long time.
Paths are meant to be split. If everyone was intended to stick to the same one, no one would ever really end up getting anywhere at all.
Not that there’s anything wrong with going the road most traveled, of course. It’s usually considered to be that way for a reason.
Just make sure the things actually leading you onto it are your own two hands behind the wheel. A GPS, while (mostly) functional, will never tailor its directions specifically to the needs of the individual driving the car.