volunteer

My Carpe Diem Testimonial
by Dannielle, 21

I took a semester off from college in February 2008 and went to Central America for three months. I traveled in a group of 8 students and two leaders. We studied Spanish at two Spanish schools, volunteered within the communities that we lived in, and spent time discovering more about ourselves. I was coming into my second year at College, and I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I felt lost and confused about my future and about who I was. I wanted to go to another country and not only learn about a new culture, but learn more about myself, and how fortunate I was living in Canada.

A June 5th article in the Pittsburgh Gazette, titled The Gap Year: More students broaden their experience of the world, by Mackenzie Carpenter, points out what I think is a very important development for the gap year movement within the U.S.: The gap year is starting to take hold with more and more students across the socioeconomic spectrum in the United States.

There was a time when taking a year out was reserved for a select group of kids from well to do families, but that isn’t the case any longer, as affordable gap year options are becoming more prevalent, and students are working to pay for their own gap years, and finding options that pay them!

Jeff joined the Up with People program based out of Denver, Colorado, on a six month multicultural education program in 2007 traveling to seven countries and twenty cities learning global citizenship and gaining in depth cross-cultural understanding. Jeff says of his gap year experience, "I learned more about the world than I ever could have learned reading a book." Jeff's story below is an exceptional testimony about the personal impact and benefits of international travel and cultural immersion as part of a structured gap year experience before college. See link to Up with People at end of article.

The Journey of a Lifetime

Jeff is a senior at Tufts University in Boston, Mass. Jeff's Gap Year experience included Spanish language study, homestay with an Argentine family, and a volunteer work experience teaching children.

For the first half of my junior year I studied abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina with Butler University’s Institute for Study Abroad (IFSA-Butler). I had always been really interested in Latin America, and had been studying Spanish since I was about 14 years old; so, when I began thinking about places to study abroad Argentina seemed like the perfect match.