Why I’m taking a gap year

I’m not exactly the best at committing to a life plan. I’ve changed my major about 15 times, and when people ask me where I see myself in five years, I honestly have no idea. I don’t really have a concrete idea of where I’m going to be in even a year.

Right now, I should be scheduling my classes for the first semester of junior year. I should be picking out a bedspread for my new apartment, and thinking about preparing to start looking at grad schools. Instead, I’m looking at headlamps on Amazon.

In just over 100 days, I will be moving 15 hours away, to Vicksburg, Mississippi. I’m essentially running away from a string of bad academic decisions to join FEMA and work on disaster sites for 10 months.

About a month ago, I was panicking at the thought of running headfirst into applying to a major that I wasn’t completely sure of. I was thinking about changing my major, yet again. This time it was from anthropology to social work with an anthropology concentration. I still wasn’t sure, and that uncertainty was a feeling I had been feeling constantly for years.

I wasn’t sure if Pitt was the place for me, but I made it work for me, and realized I really do love Pittsburgh. I joined clubs, I made friends, and I even rushed a sorority. The night I received my bid, I hadn’t been sure if I wanted to accept it or not. My roommate, who convinced me to rush in the first place, talked me into accepting it. I could always back out if I decided I didn’t like it, which I did, almost a year later.

This my bid night. Can you tell I’m not exactly sure about being there, or nah?

While I was throwing myself into internships and clubs, I was also slowly going to class less and less. I had failed freshman biology, but had written it off as something almost half of pre-meds did at Pitt. I wasn’t used to studying, because I was still in my “smart, not studious” high school mode. My GPA had taken quite a few hits, even though I had done really well in most of my classes. I was becoming a student that had all A/Bs, or Fs. No in betweens.

This fall, I kept getting this awful, terrible feeling that something was wrong. It wasn’t just that I was completely stressed out by classes, or that I didn’t know what I wanted to major in anymore, or that I wasn’t sure about my friend group… I just kept feeling like I was missing something. Something major.

This spring, that feeling followed me. It got a little better when I quit my sorority and switched dorms, but there was still this feeling of something missing from my life and my purpose. It got to the point where I was sleeping all the time to avoid this feeling. It was like having an existential crisis 24/7.

One day over spring break it hit me – it wasn’t just that I felt like I was having an existential crisis 24/7, it was that I had been putting off one for so long that it had became a part of my natural being. This was a huge wake up call for me, and I tried to take a step back and analyze what I needed to do to fix it. Maybe I could try yet again another major? Maybe I should just power through and then find something I loved in grad school? Should I drop out and go to clown school? Nothing seemed appealing, because in my heart of hearts, what I really wanted to do was take some time off and volunteer. Work for the common good. Have some time for the whole Eat Pray Love experience, only with less religion and much less of a white savior complex.

Maybe I could finish my last two and a half years of school and then discover the meaning to my life? The thought of continuing at school made me want to vomit. I happened to continue poking around the Peace Corp website, when I found a link to AmeriCorp NCCC. BINGO! You didn’t have to have a bachelor’s. Okay, so far so good. I continued my research, and the program seemed almost to be what I was looking for. You’d travel around a region of the country for 10 months, doing hands-on work in communities that needed help. It was good, but then I found AmeriCorp NCCC FEMA. It was perfect. The program was administrative in nature, but you travel to federally declared disaster zones.

When I had been training as an EMT senior year of high school, I had really liked the emergency management unit we did. I’m also strangely good with disasters, for someone who had gone through a year-long existential crisis. I would get paid a minimal amount, but I didn’t have to pay for housing, or food. It was perfect. It was an out. For the first time in almost a year, the static in my brain that had been screaming about not having a purpose shut up, and I could think strangely clearly. Still, this was ridiculous. I couldn’t just take a year off of school! I had friends, and responsibilities. I was supposed to sign a lease in like four days!

Throwback to OWeek Freshman year when I shaved half of my head for $50.

Still, the thought of not at least trying to apply to this program felt like a major mistake. I realized that if I was wiling to risk not getting in, and having to spend a semester at community college in my hometown, it was worth it. So, three weeks before the application deadline, I applied. Luckily, my parents are literally angels and fully supported my plan to completely uproot my life and move to wherever FEMA wanted to send me.

I backed out of my lease, but tried to help my roommates find a replacement. I quit the internship I had just scored, and found a writing position that supported my crazy plans (yes, it’s The Tab!), and waited to here from FEMA. This past week I finally got the “ACCEPTED” email, and I sat in shock for a good five minutes. I hadn’t even been waitlisted, which happens to more applicants than not at first. I was in. I just had to accept to find out what campus I was going to be based out of, a process that could take weeks. Luckily, I found out the very next day that my new home is going to be Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Of course, I’ll only be in Vicksburg for about 20 percent of the time. I could end up anywhere in the country, but will be mostly in the southeast. I won’t be taking classes, but I will be gaining professional experience. I don’t know what I’ll be doing during my AmeriCorp stint, which kind of makes it even more of a thrill.

I’m taking a gap year. Every time I say it, it feels even better than the last time I did. It feels less like something that I should be ashamed of, and more just like a casual part of who I’m becoming.

Higher education wasn’t really an option for me growing up. Neither of my parents went to college, and my dad actually never finished high school. He’s never been unemployed, though – a fact he’s very proud of. Both of my parents have worked hard to give my brother and I better opportunities than they have had growing up, and I’m incredibly thankful for that.

I’m going to eventually get my bachelor’s here at Pitt. Who knows, maybe I’ll come back refreshed and will be able to get the grades to go to law school, or maybe I’ll just go part time for a few years while working in government, and be a life-long civil servant. I’m not sure, and I’m learning to like that uncertainty. It’s no longer a panicked, choking feeling. It’s a feeling that speaks of hope, of paths not yet made, of a story that hasn’t even began yet. My uncertainty has become my hope.