Document administrator skills for your resume and career

I think this piggybacks a little bit on what I said above on finding a way to distinguish oneself from the competition. Anything done during a gap year would hopefully yield some knowledge, skill, or ability that can be listed as a bullet point on their resume that others may not have. Suppose a student just wants to travel to China for a while and see the Great Wall. "Back-packed in the Orient" would not be a resume bullet but "conversational in Mandarin" would be. To a lesser extent, "Cultural competency with Chinese colleagues and associates" would be, and if asked, the student could explain their familiarity with Chinese customs and etiquette came from extensive time abroad. That might give the students an advantage in certain jobs, but just being able to speak another language could be a job in itself, like as a translator. Whatever a student does during a gap year, ideally, they should walk away with a skill that someone will pay for.

Unfortunately, because of economic realities, a lot of students just take the year off to work and they work in a job where a year of experience won't necessarily count for much (if anything) when they graduate with their expected degree. This goes for both high school graduates and college graduates taking a break before their next degree. I've read the arguments about the benefits of taking a gap year, but aside from students that are on a waiting list for a prestigious program who just have time to kill, I personally find the concept of a gap year to be ill-advised as a general rule, more so between an undergraduate degree and masters or masters and doctorate. Often times the pitfalls outweigh the benefits at any stage. It just presents an opportunity for life to get in the way of something a student knows they want to do, or it delays it. Someone fresh out of high school taking a gap year to get a skill that they think will benefit them in their career after graduation might find themselves in a completely different career by the time they graduate. And university graduates who plan to further their education- taking a break or just working for a while before graduate school can put them at a disadvantage. Taking a break makes graduate school potentially harder once they have gotten used to living without that stress, the transition back to a student can be unnecessarily difficult than if they went straight through.

Those who start their career with a bachelor's degree when they know they need more than can make life choices and financial commitments that are very difficult to keep in grad school. Perhaps they financed a car or became invested in a project they don't want to abandon but would have easier with a master's degree. Or they start a family and now have to juggle caring for and providing for their family with getting the next degree they need when caring for family would have likely been easier if they had an advanced degree. My bachelor's degree was in social work and many of my classmates decided that they just wanted to work for a while before attending grad school, only to find their return to school delayed and all of the experience they gain with that license not translating into an advantage after they graduated and were looking for a job with the higher license. Essentially many of them just had to play catch-up to those that went straight through and started their career at a higher level. Starting at one level when you know that you need the next level can just be lost time, especially since starting with a bang would only put off working for two years to get the next degree.

I had classmates that intended to go back after a year or two, but by the time they intended to return, they fell in love, got married, had beautiful babies, and all of these blessings meant that they couldn't walk away from a job and health insurance to study full-time. This meant it was harder and took far longer and increased their time working for lower pay, whereas if they hadn't taken a break, they would be working full-time at a higher pay with no classes to juggle. I'm not suggesting that people put off life until school is done or delay marriage, children, or buying a home in favor of going back to school if that is their next step in life, only that they can't assume that it'll be easy to just pick up where they left off if they choose to wait.

Less fortunate things can happen as well, like health crises and caregiving, developing an illness, or having to care for aging parents. These things would have been easier if they have chosen to go straight through. These are some reasons why I think taking a gap year is risky. But if anybody wants to take a gap year, I would be conscientious not to commit to anything that would delay returning to school or not make up for that time by giving them a competitive edge. Otherwise, a year off can easily turn into a decade and it can just add up to lost time.