As soon as the holiday arrives, the topic related to GAP sparks heated discussions, I really want to have a gao time Why is it so difficult to go home for a year
The first batch of young people who went home for the New Year and were in the gap stage were even more worried, for fear of facing the disappointed eyes of their parents and the questions of their relatives.
Elsewhere, GAP is fitness, volunteering, and travel;
And here, GAP is more like a big gamble, which means being out of touch, unable to keep up with the pace of society, and becoming a serious loser in the outside world.
So, weSeeing that the gap year is now rolled into a GPA year, the youth hostel is full of young people who have settled down because of the gap, looking for a job, going to graduate school, and applying to study abroad, and I hear the voice that "the blank period on the resume is the only happy time in adulthood".
Why do Chinese students dare not GAP and roll the gap year into a GPA year?
Choosing GAP can only be the choice of those who have confidence, does GAP mean lying flat, out of touch with the rhythm of society, and becoming a loser in the eyes of others?
What happened to the young people who chose GAP?
When the gap year rolls into a GPA year
As the social clock rings in on the clock, the gap year is no longer a comfortable buffer, but a curve paved by GPA, in which everyone wants to overtake.
"Exam preparation" is one of the most crowded tracks, with degrees, certificates, languages, positions, ......At the end of this track, there are countless shores waiting to be landed.
Li Nuo is one of those who graduated from the GPA year.
In the first 18 years of her life, she was good enough and lucky enough to successfully enter the top 2 universities. But just like Zheng Yajun wrote in "After the Title of the Gold List: The Mystery of the Differentiation of College Students":
When college students step into the campus of a prestigious university in a daze, they are likely to find that life in the middle of it is like a carefully laid out and colorful labyrinth: there is no 'main road' or some standard way of walking
It seems that there are many possibilities for each day, everyone needs to constantly make choices at the intersection, each path has its own merits, and most of them maintain a certain distance from the world outside the labyrinth. ”
She was shocked by her new life, until she filled out the graduation destination form in her senior year, and her classmates either filled in "further education", "employment", or "going abroad", and she seemed to be the only one who filled in "pending" - because the company that promised her to become a regular employee rejected her in the end.
So she made the fastest choice in four years of college, that is, to go home and prepare materials for studying abroad;
It took two months to prepare for IELTS and got to 75 grades, and another two months to prepare the application essay;
In the next 8 months, she also took a driver's license, learned PS and PR, and went to the ** industry for internship ......
Later, she successfully applied to the ideal school and is now working in a major Internet company. It can be seen,That GPA year played an integral role in her later education and career path. (Little Red Book @ Ahri Sha).
There are people like Li Nuo who have succeeded in the GPA Year track, but more than that, it is the anxious and painful majority on the road.
Cheng Yu is also a person who has walked through the GPA year, but recalls that year,The pain is far greater than the joy of the final success
She had planned to study abroad, but by mistake she was "completely rejected" (i.e., she did not receive any university offers), so she had to start a GPA year after a short break.
At first, she applied for 28 items while preparing for the GRE, but two months later, she failed the GRE exam, and she had to temporarily adjust her plan to apply for internships at the same time.
At that time, not only did she not have an offer, but also received 3 rejection letters. But she didn't dare to collapse, and she couldn't collapseI had to muster up the courage to go to a new city and start my internship in a bank and a major Internet company. The work during the day was very stressful, and when she returned to her residence at night, she had to work hard to revise her paperwork.
Fortunately, after many failures, she finally received an offer from her dream school at 23 o'clock one night. So,When she shares her GPA Year experience with others, she is not "this year, this is the year to be successful" style of experience indoctrination, but more of encouragement:
We all have our own futures, it's okay to be afraid, it's okay to be anxious, who isn't struggling to move forward? Time is good medicine, only you can take care of yourself, I hope everyone can have a tiger's heart and a turtle's shell, and have courage and shelter at the same time. (Xiaohongshu @ almost on the line, don't be anxious)
When the gap year rolls into a GPA year, there is no poetry and distance, there is often anxiety and frustration, and a few pains and successes.
GAP is not a useless, leisurely, relaxing holiday, it needs to be useful, it needs to work hard, and it needs to accumulate energy for a better self;
Need to be someone else's gap year, is to spend a year after graduation in-depth travel, feel a different life; It's best for you to prepare for the exam and successfully go ashore in your gap year, or take a few internships in large factories, and by the way, take a few certificates.
After all, in an era of rapid change and increasingly limited opportunities, pause means big gambling and a high price.
GAP is ashamed to speak up in the social evaluation system, because it means lying flat.
Can thosePeople who have really spent a gap year, are they really lying flat?
GAP is not simply an escape from the present.
A gap year can be described as: a journey of courage for a dreamer, a few months to a year, interrupting or suspending the rules we have set for our lives;
Go to a different environment, experience a new culture, and rediscover the connection between people and people, and between people and everythingReset yourself and let you have an all-round restart of your attitude towards life.
This is the group profile of Douban's "The Gap Year" group, and it is also the definition of the gap year at the beginning, which is the reason why the gap year is full of different attractions.
Lin Mu is a student at a 985 university, and in his freshman year, he "felt suffocated" because his environment was full of ideas about "what age should I do something", so he chose to take a leave of absence to go to GAP.
After GAP, he traveled to many countries alone, unlocking multiple identities such as grocery store employee, self-** operator, teacher of Chinese as a foreign language, freelance writer, tour guide, etc., and had many wonderful moments.
In the process,He picks up the fragments of the "self" and reshapes the self that has been crushed by his past life, constantly filling his "gap list" with peculiar experiences and experiences, as he shared:
A gap year is an intermission, your own time, at this time remember to be kind to yourself, a little willful, nothing is more important than your physical and mental pleasure. (Xiaohongshu @ Longling Leone).
After working for a year, Chu Yue quit her job, which seemed to outsiders to be very stable, and participated in a volunteer trip to capture the moments that she couldn't feel before because she was trapped in the cubicle
"When a job can no longer be materially driven, and you can't find enough value-driven support, you need to think carefully about whether you need to break the ice and change the environment. ”
She uses patience and anticipation to accomplish things that are often seen as "wasted time." For example, working in a bookstore, unpacking books, and "wiping books" ......Although these little things are long and single, she can find "surprises like opening a blind box" in them.
In addition, like Lin Mu, she has unlocked many "firsts". (Little Red Book @ a grapefruit).
Although the specific life is different, Lin Mu and Chu Yue's gap year experience,are all "meaningless" things under meritocracy, which help them explore a broader boundary of life and understand themselves more comprehensively.
It's just that, as mentioned at the beginning, the reason why people like Lin Mu and Chu Yue are not common in the environment around us is because:
Their lives are a challenge to the current atmosphere of "life that can't be put on a resume is not worth living", and in this atmosphere, their choice becomes a huge gamble.
Like Chen Yi, he regretted choosing a gap year.
After graduating from university, he planned to apply to study abroad, but he couldn't get the ideal offer for some reasons, so he simply took a gap year and prepared application materials while traveling.
But after half a year, he regretted it, because he spent a lot of money on the trip in the early stage, which came from his parents, but his family's annual income was not high.
Moreover, he had hoped to improve his language score in the relaxed atmosphere of travel, but he never prepared, and when the application deadline came, he hurriedly booked a seat, but he did not expect that the nearby test seats were full.
When it came time to apply, he found that the admission threshold of his dream school seemed to have become higher - "It is better to go directly to the guaranteed school last year, and now I not only have to feel the anxiety of applying again, but also face the risk that the application result is not as good as last year." ”
Chen Yi is not the only one who regrets itWhen they return to the workplace, they find that they are either older or lack sufficient work experience than other job seekers, and their continuously decreasing savings have also made them lose the courage to choose offers at will.
Under these pressures, the physical and mental state that was finally adjusted in the early stage was destroyed again, and I wanted to share it with my friends but found that there was no common languageThere seems to be more self-doubt and self-denial than there was before the gap
And from the experiences of these young people who choose GAP, you will find:
GAP is not simply to escape from the present, to go to poetry and distance, it requires you to think clearly about your choice, in addition to avoiding the pain of blind volume, you need to bear the pain of self-exploration, GAP means the opportunity to restart life, the precious harvest of life experience.
Don't roll the pain with blindness.
Vicarious for the pain of self-exploration.
There is no perfect choice", and this phrase also applies in gap years.
A gap year in the traditional sense is not all about comfort.
When he graduated from college, Li Si thought that he had lived "as hard as high school" in the past four years, so he did not hesitate to use a year to rest and adjust.
At the beginning, she was indeed very comfortable, but half a month later, relatives and friends began to ask her about her work and relationship, and the status of her classmates' further studies or work also appeared on social platforms from time to time, and she began to be anxious about whether she was really "messing up".
She began to feel anxious about the emptiness, and after just one month, she gave up the "adjustment plan" she had made and began to prepare for the exams for different positions.
And the so-called GPA year is not all anxiety and busyness.
In the GPA year, Li Nuo also "did a lot of things that he always wanted to do but couldn't do", such as fitness, learning to dance, watching concerts, watching TV with his parents, and so on.
She seems to have found a balance between busyness and rest, and on this balance she "realized a little bit what she really wanted".
You will find that gap year and GPA year, when you think about it, can also be a rewarding journey in life.
Voices from the outside world, such as the "social clock", can help us judge whether we should do something or not, but it should not be the determining factor, and only we can really determine what we should do.
It is true that the opportunities are limited, the spinning top is unlimited, and society wants to pick the one that turns faster and more coherently.
But life experience is still precious, and building autonomy and going your own way is not to satisfy anyone, nor to compete with anyone. So, how to go, it's the right way.
Instead of doing things to rest on the surface, inwardly they are self-exploiting and self-reproaching; On the surface, I am studying or working, but the voice of "I want to rest" echoes in my head over and over again.
It will not be kidnapped by questions such as "what exactly should be done in a gap year" and "who is qualified to go to the gap", whether it is a gap or not, and how long is a gap, it has its own set of evaluation criteria.
It is true that under the "merit society", the general environment is changing rapidly, and the fault tolerance rate is getting lower and lower, as the philosopher Han Byung-chul said: "The theme of merit is engaged in a kind of coercive freedom, or free coercion, in order to achieve the ultimate goal - the maximization of performance." ”
"Rest" seems to have become a secret shame for everyone, and GAP seems to have become a kind of freedom that exists in the imagination.
However, running blindly on the road of rolling may instead replace the "pain" of self-exploration with the pain of rolling.
Sometimes there is an opportunity to discover oneself when you take a break.
Reference: 1] Chinese Research Room: The gap year that was blown up was crowded with young people who were rolling up and dying.