Last fall, as my friends were doing last minute packing for college or sending me pictures of their newly decorated dorm rooms, I was packing up a duffel bag and trying to break in a new pair of work boots. Instead of heading off for my first semester of college, I was going to Eugene, Oregon, to work on a conservation corps for the first month of my gap year. I was thrilled to be trying something totally new after four years of high school—until my mom and I actually showed up in Eugene, and reality hit.

School has always been a familiar, sometimes even comforting, place for me. For as long as I can remember, I derived much of my self-confidence and identity from being “smart” (to me, this meant doing well in school, and often enjoying it). School was definitely not always easy—or fun—but it was a place where I knew the rules of success, and it was the main focus of my life from the age of five to the age of eighteen.

Northwest Youth Corps, where I would be spending five weeks doing conservation work and camping all over Oregon, was the opposite of the environment I’d been accustomed to for so long. I spent the entire orientation day in Eugene fighting back tears, trying to remind myself that five weeks was not a long time and that it would be beyond embarrassing to return home without even giving it a try. If you’ve talked to me at any length over the course of my first few weeks at Wesleyan, you might know how this story ends. I loved it.

The rest of the year had plenty of high moments—and also plenty of lows. There were many times when I felt isolated, especially during the nearly five months I spent at home, trying to force tourists to wear masks while working retail, while all my friends were away at college. During my spring months, when I was traveling, there were times when I wondered what exactly I was doing, and if I was just wasting my time without any clear purpose. When I was in school, I never worried about having a purpose because I was simply too busy. Even during the long, often empty days of the early pandemic, I was still expected to get up and get on Zoom in time for class. In high school, I was always working toward something, whether that was an essay due the next day, doing well in a class, or bigger goals, like getting into college.  

People usually assume that my gap year was COVID-19 related, since many people in my high school class and the class above took time off due to the pandemic. But I had already started to think about taking a gap year pre-COVID, probably around sophomore year of high school. I wanted to understand who I could be without placing school at the center of my life. I also liked the fact that I could just try things and that no matter what happened, school would still be waiting for me at the end.

I don’t mean to suggest that I think everyone should take a gap year. There are plenty of reasons not to do so. Being able to take time off is often a privilege—I have friends who would have considered gap years but were unable because deferring would have meant losing financial aid. The freedom to “just try things” is something that I feel very grateful to have been able to do. Many people take a year or more off for financial reasons. I also know many people who just didn’t want to. My friends from high school were thrilled to be able to start college, especially after more than a year of online school, and were ready to go as soon as possible.

And then there is the fact that I am now back in school, sitting in class for hours each week and planning my days around my work. In some ways, I am exactly where I would have been if the entire past year hadn’t happened. You could argue that my year off was just procrastination to the max.

There are times I think my gap year may have made the transition back to school harder. When I’m having a rough afternoon, bored and tired after nearly three straight hours of class, or feeling myself get caught up in the social dynamics of freshman year, I find myself wishing desperately for the best parts of last year. And when I start to think about the fact that I will be here for the next four years of my life, Wesleyan starts to seem very long and terrifyingly permanent compared to the short stretches of weeks or months that defined my year off.

Yet when I think about how all of this would feel without my gap year, I would make the same choice in a second. The time off made me realize what I appreciated about school, but it also showed me that my identity as a student, which has dominated so much of my life, is far from the most important thing about me. I met people from worlds far beyond the private school sphere that has surrounded me for most of my life. I did things I would never have heard of or considered. I loved some of them and hated others. I was forced to take ownership of my own happiness in a way I never really had to before. At this point, it’s impossible to know who I would be without the last year of my life, but the person who I am is more than good enough for me.

Isabella Caro can be reached at icaro@wesleyan.edu