Why you should ignore your parents and take a gap year

Finn Lavelle spent exactly two days at university. On the third day, he quit.

Lavelle, 19, went straight from his HSC into a bachelor of social work. His parents thought it was a great fit but it took only those 48 hours for Lavelle to realise the degree wasn’t right for him. Since March, he’s been a builder’s labourer. After nine months on the tools, he now knows exactly what he wants to do.

Finn Lavelle started university this year but has been working as a builder’s labourer and thinks he will now go to TAFE.Credit: James Brickwood

Thousands of students across Australia have been receiving university offers over the past few weeks. They will enrol in those degrees but one in six will drop out. There are estimates about 30 per cent of students straight out of school will change degrees after their first year.

Some will struggle through degrees they hate because they are pleasing parents. And all the while, students are accumulating HECS debts for degrees never completed or worse, loathed.

As a parent, I understand the temptation to make sure kids stay on the treadmill. Will Stubley, co-founder of school leaver transition platform Year 13, says his research shows that while some parents are open, most think it is important to go straight to university without a break.

“‘Don’t waste a year’. But I went straight to uni and did civil engineering,” says Stubley, who finished his degree but has never built a bridge.

Tilly Cooper, 19, knew after three weeks social work wasn’t for her. She worked in hospitality and admin, away from study pressures. Next year, she’s heading to ANU to do arts. The university experience wasn’t what she imagined – many classes were online.

“After doing the HSC online, that wasn’t what I wanted uni to be like ... there was less of a social aspect,” she says.

Experts say there is a better way. Higher education researcher Sally Kift, an adjunct professor at QUT, says we think of ATAR as a commodity, one that needs to be spent, using every single mark students gain to get into courses with the highest cutoffs.

“There’s a view that you shouldn’t ‘waste’ it by going to TAFE,” she says. Kift says that’s the wrong attitude.

TAFE’s exactly where Lavelle plans to go. He says his gap year, taken belatedly after dropping out of uni this year, helped him focus on what he really wanted and next year he will enrol in landscaping. Lavelle confesses he finally took the advice of a school adviser to choose a career where he didn’t have to sit at a desk all day.

The gap year should be normalised, says Curtin University’s Sarah O’Shea. It gives young people the opportunity to mature, to develop broader interests, and gives students from a range of backgrounds the opportunity to earn money.

“Students no longer move seamlessly between school and university but instead may move across and between different destinations,” she says. She calls them “zig zags”.

Gap years can be genuinely wonderful experiences but as gap year researcher Samantha McMahon says, they aren’t created equal. Young people who live in regional areas are less likely to go to uni if they take a gap year compared to kids in the city – and for some, trying to support themselves or contribute to the family means it’s harder to save for something like travel.

McMahon is taking time out herself. She’s usually an academic at the University of Sydney where she led the Re-Inventing the Gap Year project, but right now, she’s the learning manager at Bundanon, a regional NSW gallery.

With colleagues across universities and the Country Education Foundation, McMahon designed a gap year guide, specifically geared for regional Australia, including very encouraging videos and stories of those who took a gap year and then went to uni.

Chris Boyd-Skinner, 37, grew up in Wollongong, did his HSC in 2003. His HSC mark was too low for any degrees he was interested in. He started an electrical apprenticeship and left after six months to become a sailing instructor on Hamilton Island. Four years later, he applied to nursing. Loved it. He spent eight years as an intensive care nurse and then completed a double masters in health. He now works for the public service in health policy and management.

“For me, it was about being mature enough to decide what I really wanted to do,” he says. Next year, he’s travelling to the US and Europe on a Churchill Fellowship.

But at least two parents are very supportive of gap years. Angelo von Moller, 18, went to Preshil in Kew and his aim is to work in diplomacy. He’s not entirely sure whether he wants to take a gap year – although plenty of his friends are – but his parents will back him whatever decision he makes.

His aim is to study at ANU which would mean leaving home for university.

“I think a bit of a gap between finishing high school and then going interstate would give me the experience of doing some paid work, closer to home, before leaving,” says von Moller.

As Finn Lavelle says, a gap year can open your eyes: “Earn money, discover yourself, learn about the world.”

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