Grown-up gap year: how taking a leap can help you and even boost your career
A year away from home is not just reserved for the young and wild. Taking a sabbatical from your busy life is a perfect way to have a break, re-energise and broaden your horizons, and there’s no better time than now
There’s something delightfully indulgent about taking a grown-up gap year. Think Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Eat, Pray, Love. As she observed, every country she visited during her escape – Italy, India, Indonesia – began with the letter ‘I’. Talk about the ultimate ‘me time’ trip.
There are many reasons why grown-ups don’t take gap years: they can’t afford them, the opportunity never arose, they lacked the confidence, and, primarily, it’s hard to opt out of your life and your job.
Dr Patricia Philo Kopstein, a therapist who works at Blurton Family Development Centre in Hong Kong and specialises in mid-profession and mid-life issues, says grown-up gap years remind her of sabbaticals, which many professors and members of the clergy enjoy as part of their work contracts.
Six tips for planning a grown-up gap year
“The stated goal for clergy is to refresh and have personal time after non-stop public ‘on call’ time. For professors (and many professionals such as scientists and researchers), it is a time to pursue their own projects in the field,” she says. In other words – time out to extend knowledge that will ultimately help their own faculties.