The Gapper View

(Note - The time covered by each of these accounts employed only part of the author's fifteen-month gap)

At the end the memory of that time has a magical quality,

an experience enriching life beyond measure

Tom Mitcheson.  Trinity College, Cambridge University.  I would thoroughly recommend a period working and travelling abroad to anyone who has the chance to take a Gap Year.  I spent nine months working as a laboratory assistant in a cancer research laboratory in New York.  It is one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had.  I thoroughly enjoyed my work and learnt enormous amounts about laboratory practice, even getting my name on a research paper.  I was able to draw on that during my biology degree at university and still benefit from it in my current job as a patent barrister.  I travelled extensively, exploring the East Coast at weekends, and was able to take a ten-week camping trip around the beautiful West Coast when I had finished.  I arrived at university a much more mature and confident individual, with a broader outlook on the world through my experiences.

Louisa Greene.  St John’s College,  Oxford University.  When the opportunity presented itself to take time out adventuring in Africa I was hooked.  For me the key to the trip was the blend of physical, emotional and cultural experiences.  I didn’t enjoy the blistering desert heat, using fly-ridden pit-latrines or being bitten by mosquitoes; but what mattered to me was helping local school children, participating in a medical project, climbing to 5000m and watching big game.  I think my most important accomplishment was learning what sort of person I am, how I react when the going gets unbearably hard, or how I view sublime beauty alongside abject poverty.  Knowing that you can achieve a difficult task as part of a team makes the rest of your life more exciting.

Robert Breare.  St Catherine's College, Oxford University.  I thought I had it sorted: eighteen, House Captain, A-Levels under my belt, a place at Oxford and four months wages to travel on.  In Kenya Njoroge thought that he had it sorted: eighteen, primary school exams finished, hands and feet calloused by a lifetime in the fields, but already in debt for his first two children's school fees.  Njoroge became a good friend as I taught his children for six months in my year off, cramming eight children to a desk around a torn section of exercise book.  Forty perpetually grinning children, driven by a desire to learn, were undeterred by wind driving through the crumbling mud walls....   Robert returned to university and set about raising £30,000 to help build a new school for the 600 children in that Kenyan community.

Jason Gibb.   University of East Anglia.  I was determined to make the most of my Gap Year.  Ignoring parental advice to get a job and build a healthy bank balance, I looked around for something that would satisfy my passion for travel, adventure and conservation.  When I set off I knew only that I would be working alongside scientists studying and surveying coral reefs.  The work was hard, we fetched supplies, rebuilt the latrines and made surveys on the reef eco-systems.  The underwater coral surveys were undoubtedly the favourites.  The confidence I gained from travelling to a remote and distant part of the world has been priceless.  The experience has given me a head start on my biology course.