With gap years becoming an increasingly popular post-high school option, C Mag decided to interview Paly graduates who took a year off before college to see where they are now.

Galen Byrd

“I wanted some real-life experiences before going to college,” Galen Byrd said on deciding to take a gap year.  With college deadlines drawing ever closer, Byrd, like many high schoolers, felt, “I wasn’t passionate about anything. I had interests, but I really didn’t care deeply about anything”. With the bubble of high school concealing the outside world experiences necessary to find his true direction, Byrd chose a different path to accomplish his goal of experiencing real-life: a gap year. External forces stepped in again.  “My mom ‘forced’ me into outward bound.” With a little research, Byrd became more excited. “Once I looked into it, I wanted to go.  My sister took a similar South America trip, so I felt comfortable knowing she has been to these places already.”

Guided by the advice of family and friends, Byrd  finally set off on his year-long exploration. “I started with a 3.5 week outward bound course in southeastern Utah. We hiked 90 miles of backcountry and rafted 80 miles of the Colorado river.”  He then embarked on a 6-week trip to Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. After that came many quicker trips with friends and family to Thailand, Vietnam,  Cambodia and Cuba.

Now back and starting his first year at the University of Vermont, Byrd has found profound benefits from his year off. “With a year off, my transition to college was smoother and I have a totally rejuvenated and interested in learning.  I am genuinely enjoying classes compared to my low-interest  in my classes in high school.” Byrd recalls the benefits he got from challenging himself as well.“ I remember  before my trip that my biggest challenge was facing my anxiety,” he said.   “But today there are multiple  incidences where I rise to the challenge.  I may not remember all the specifics but the overall memory is that of pure happiness.” To Byrd, a gap year was a great decision. “I gained so much perspective in so many aspects of life that I otherwise would have never even understood. My prior life was very structured. School, sports, summer camps, homework, etc. I had never had to really question, value, or understand the precious moments of my life. ”

Byrd believes that every student graduating should be required to take a gap year in order to find what matters to them and to determine how they will invest their time exploring the possibilities, “Deciding how to spend your time is a life skill that eventually we must all learn. The earlier, the better.”

 Sophia Armitano

Sophia Armitano couldn’t picture herself going to college right after high school. When thinking about the next chapter of her life, college just didn’t feel like the right path. “I knew that after college I wanted to start working, and once you start working it is much more difficult to get up and leave your life/work/etc. I thought this was the perfect time to do whatever I wanted,” she said.

Armitano, a member of Palo Alto High School (Paly’s) class of 2016, was then inspired to look into alternative post-high school plans. After talking to many people who had taken a year off after high school, and hearing nothing but positive feedback about taking a gap year, Armitano decided she needed to discover herself through travel, and take time off of school to recover from the academic pressures of living in Palo Alto.

“I was tired of living like a Palo Alto robot. I have absolutely no hatred for Palo Alto, and I am extremely fortunate and thankful for everything I have, but I got caught up in a lot of it and I wanted to experience something different,” she said.

With that, Armitano got a job at Anthropologie to raise money for her trip, and started to plan with her close friend Alys Olmstead, who also decided to take a gap year after graduating from Paly last year.

“We decided [we would go to] South America, because there are many hikes, circuits and outdoor activities to do. We both speak Spanish so we thought it would be a good idea to be able to utilize that,” she said.

Armitano started her gap year by traveling throughout Europe by herself, finding her way as the trip unfolds. She has been to various cities, including Munich, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Bolzano Vicentino (a small town near Venice) and Venice. She plans to visit more Italian and Spanish cities. Afterwards, she plans to move on to South America, where she and Olmstead will continue their gap years.

Like many others, Armitano went into her gap year with goals of self-improvement and with an open mindset. Most of all, however, she wanted to learn how to live in the moment.

“Anybody who knows me knows that I like to plan ahead and that I’m very organized. Sometimes that interferes with living in the moment and enjoying life,” she said. “I wanted to challenge myself to not have every detail planned out. Being in a completely new place and knowing absolutely no one is completely out of my comfort zone, but it’s also exciting and something I think everyone should experience.”

Armitano feels as though her indecisiveness is her greatest limiting factor, and that when planning her trip to the next city, she finds herself wasting a lot of time because of it. However, she feels that traveling alone has allowed her to learn through experience and work on her flaws.

When asked if she would recommend that others take a gap year, Armitano responded passionately.

“There are so many things you can do and learn on your gap year that no level of education can come close to,” she said. “I haven’t heard of people that regret taking a gap year, but I’m sure it’s not the right fit for everyone. If you feel burnt out, not ready to go to college, want something different, or want to find yourself, you should definitely take a gap year. To anybody that is even slightly considering it, take a gap year,” Armitano advised. “You’re never ever going to get this opportunity again. College, or whatever it is you want to do, can wait.”

Rebecca Sunnerås-Jonsson

“Like many, I was pretty burnt out from the academic pressure at Paly by the time I was a senior, and as second semester neared it became more and more clear that going to college straight away was not the right move for me.”

With college application deadlines looming, Rebecca Sunnerås Jonsson , made the quick decision to opt out of the traditional path of education and pursue a gap year.  “I believe a lot of people in high school default to thinking (as I once did) that there’s just this one path from leaving high school to your goals,” she said. “But that’s just not true.   We all know that talk of college at Paly starts so early and that there is often a pretty singular presumed outcome. I just don’t see a lot of people investing serious time to really think about what they really want out of life before they leave high school.” She added, “I came to understand that I had to first find myself and find out a bit more about where I fit in the world. I came to believe that if I could do that, then I’d be able to make so much more out of my time and efforts at college.”

For students looking to take a gap year, national programs have more recently been established to assist student’s travel and classes for the year, however for Sunnerås Jonsson, need for 100% freedom was on top of her priority list. “I was initially interested in going on an organized gap year program,  where you travel and have the opportunity to take classes as you go, but that did not seem free enough.  Then, one of my French best friends was also taking a gap year.  She was planning to live and work in Paris, and convinced me, sort of on a whim, she convinced me to move to Paris with her.”

From there, real freedom was given, “Going to Paris on my own was a great choice for me.  Suddenly, I was given the ability to travel around Europe as I desired and Paris would be my homebase.  While the gap year programs are expensive and structured, I would be able to live for next to nothing.” She said with time abroad, “I found a real passion for art, something I never had time in high school to discover the wonders of art.” “A lot of this trip is about learning more about myself and how to take care of myself more like an adult, and living alone (with my two best friends) is teaching me a lot.

It’s really cool to see all the opportunities that have lined up by just not having any plans at all, and having the freedom to do literally whatever you want.”