Rina - 00:00
Hey guys, my name is Rina and I am truly honored to be an ambassador for the Canadian Gap Year Association this year.
So just some basic information about myself, I'm currently about halfway through my Gap Year.
Some of the things that I've already done or am trying to do include things like being in dance performances, working. I have a job at McDonald's and as an online English tutor. I had an online volunteer position at an organization called Fashion Revolution.
Rina - 00:35
And overall, I've just really appreciated having a lot more time to spend with my family and my friends that I know I'm going to be leaving behind this year.
I'm 18 going on to 19, so I took my Gap Year straight out of high school and would you guess I actually live in Japan! I've lived here all my life but yeah, so I speak English and Japanese both I'd like to think at a native level.
Oh, here's my cat. Say hi.
Not even going to try and pretend I'm not filming this on a different day, although ironically wearing overalls yet again.
Rina - 01:27
Anyways, another thing that I did start this year is a YouTube channel, so there I've been trying to post videos about my take on Gap Years and overall just things that I've been doing this year and related to that one of my goals for this year is to see a little bit more of Japan before I go to Canada for university and so I'm trying to organize some domestic travel and I've already documented one trip that I went on and hopefully I'll be able to do that a little bit more over there and maybe here, who knows?
My Gap Year story is a little bit different from what you might expect from someone who's an ambassador, because I actually never planned to take a Gap Year.
This was never a conscious, deliberate decision. It was definitely a lot more circumstantial, so I've already deferred my offer for a year to go to university in Canada next fall.
And as you may imagine, with me applying in the winter of 2020, well, international travel was looking pretty grim at that point.
Rina - 02:28
The initial reason why I even considered a Gap Year is because I simply didn't think that I would make it to Canada in time for in-person classes for fall of 2021. So I had kind of started to plan what I might do with an extra year in Japan.
I thought I might work, I might do a little bit more of my dancing, which was definitely a hobby of mine, but beyond that, I didn't really know what I wanted to do because this Gap Year wasn't like, oh, I'm so inspired to do so, and so therefore I want a year off school, it was never like that.
Then last summer I finally decided on the university that I'm going to and I had always dreamed of university and the kind of new social experiences and the academic experiences that I would get.
But the thing was at that point there was so much in Japan that I really wanted to get those experiences before I went to university.
Rina - 03:28
After a long time and really overthinking and indecisiveness and all that fun stuff. I eventually decided to take a Gap Year. I was feeling very, very unsure about my choice, but as you may imagine, over the past few months, I've grown to really appreciate the extra time that my Gap Year has given me to do all sorts of different things.
So yeah, I'm very excited to share with you my journey, so that's it from me for now.
Thank you so much for watching, comment down below the kind of topics that you want us to cover in our future videos and don’t forget to subscribe and I'll see you again soon bye!