Claire - 00:00
Welcome back! Today, I'm going to be answering some of Reddit's Top Gap Year questions.
Currently I'm on a Gap Year, I am about halfway through and I realized for one reason or another that there are a ton of people who are looking for answers about Gap Years, especially on the subreddit R/GapYear.
So I figured, you know, with my experience taking a Gap Year, I would kind of have a go at answering these questions. So yeah, I really hope that this video is useful for you and that some of my answers provide meaningful insight into what it's like to take a Gap Year.
Claire - 00:35
The first question that I found on Reddit was, “Should I work remotely or should I find work in the place that I'm traveling to?”. I think that this one is really dependent upon your situation and the type of remote work you're doing, as well as the place that you're going.
A lot of places require work visas and that can be a really big hassle, especially if you're considering trying to move around a lot and find work in those places. But if your plan is to country hop and move around then working remotely might really work for you, because you're not in a set place, you don't have to look for a job every single time you're looking to move somewhere, working remotely really gives you the opportunity to set your own hours in most cases, and to be a self guided worker, which I think is a great opportunity, especially for students on a Gap Year.
For me, I would personally rather do remote work than looking for work in the place that I have, but I might say that I am currently on a Tier 5 youth visa and that means that I can find work in the UK.
What I've done during my gap here so far is I've gotten 2 two part time jobs which were here in the UK, but I would say for myself it's because that I'm not really moving around from the UK that much, and so it was OK to have a stable job, but I wouldn't recommend it for anyone that is moving around a ton and trying to find more experiences in different places.
Claire - 2:00
Currently I'm actually looking for remote work for the opposite reason because I want to transfer my UK job to Canada and so by doing remote work, I'll be able to do that really smoothly compared to if I had kind of a concrete job in a location.
The one thing about working remotely that I will say is that sometimes if you don't get to set your own hours then it can affect some of the sociability aspects of your Gap Year. But this is with any work really, so I think that it's just making sure that your remote work knows that you know you might be in a different time zone and to try and get accommodation for that if possible.
Alright, the next question that was on Reddit was “When should I start planning my Gap Year, I’m this age and I'm thinking about starting like I'm thinking about taking a Gap Year, when should I start planning it?”.
Claire - 02:50
My suggestion for this is you can never start too soon. I literally started brainstorming ideas for my Gap Year in grade 10 so it doesn't matter when you start planning it, but what I will say is that you should have a concrete plan before you go into it.
What I mean by concrete is, you know, a well defined plan before you go into it. You know, you need to cover things like what happens if things go wrong with my plan. So what I would suggest for this is checking out Can Gap’s “Gap Year Planning Toolkit”.
Claire - 03:23
It's a really great opportunity to meet with some Gap Year mentors and experts and plan your Gap Year in her realistic light. So yeah I'll link that down below but that's what I would suggest for planning your Gap Year and really you can do it at any age. I would say if you start early you know it's OK to keep modifying that plan based on your situation. So just do it whenever you want, but modify it as you get closer based on your current situation.
The next question I found on Reddit was “Looking for opportunities that still involve learning on your Gap Year”, and I think that there are so many that it's difficult to fit in one kind of Q&A about Reddit. There are so many different traditional academic experiences that you can seek on your Gap Year, experiential and volunteer opportunities. I think that learning can come in any experience really, so this is a very broad question.
Claire-Marie - 04:17
From my own experience, what I would suggest is checking out “Operation Wallacea” and their field courses, if that's what you're interested in. I would recommend checking out their trips and field courses, and they also have online, online tutored internships that they do, and those are relatively reasonable, affordable price.
So I would recommend checking “Operation Wallacea” for that. If you're interested in more academic learning, and you're from Canada, then TVO has really affordable high school courses which you can take if that's like you're looking more to leverage your GPA or take courses again, or even try something new that you didn't get to in high school. So yeah, check out TVO for that. That's the most affordable online school that there is.
Claire - 05:05
But if you're someone who's looking to leverage leadership skills and learn a thing or two about adulting and kind of getting things together in their own life, then I would really recommend checking out the CanGap’s Gap Year Gameplan.
You'll actually earn an award with CanGap called the Student of Leadership and Humanity Award. The award is a really great way to show employers and future schools that you've kind of gone ahead and gone above and beyond to learn more about yourself as a leader and your place in the world.
So the next question I found on Reddit is “How much does a Gap Year cost?” And I think that this is a really, really broad question because it depends on your circumstance. Again, like if you are like me and you don't have to pay for rent and food, then that is going to bring the cost dramatically down.
Claire- 05:53
But it really depends on what you want to do. So my recommendation for figuring out how much your Gap Year costs, write down your dream Gap Year and then choose what is actually attainable based on your financial situation at the time. And remember when you're doing this, you can also set aside time in your Gap Year to do work to fund your dreams.
I had a really great time answering these Gap Year questions and it made me think a lot about my own Gap Year and where I might have gone a bit wrong and also where I would change what I've done already, so that's going to be it for this video.
Claire - 06:29
I really hope that it helped you and kind of answered some questions that you may be having about taking a Gap Year. If you like this video, make sure to leave it thumbs up. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Bye!