3 Things You Might Learn on a Gap Year - By: Mark Bottell

I know what you’re thinking... no more learning for me! For many, a gap year marks a break in learning, a step between college and university, or between graduation and starting a new career. It is the one time when you can put any thoughts of studying or learning to the back of your mind and really take it easy. But what you might not realise is, you’ll be learning the whole time you’re away.

Picking up the Lingo

The chances are that if you leave England for your gap year, you will land up in a country where English is not the mother tongue. Whether you end up in Africa surrounded by Swahili, in Germany garbling German, or in New Zealand morphing into Maori you are bound to pick up a few phrases along the way. Make it your mission to learn the basic day-to-day phrases in the languages of each country you’re visiting on your gap year as you travel through them, and you’ll not only make life a great deal easier for yourself, but you might just make some fantastic friends amongst the locals along the way.

Doing the Maths

We’re not all good at maths; in fact some of us are still celebrating the day that calculators were added to mobile phones. But the fact is, if you travel to a foreign country on your gap year, you are most probably going to have to get to grips with a different currency and an ever-changing exchange rate. You might well know exactly how many pounds were in your bank account when you set off, but will you be able to convert that into Thai baht, Moroccan dirham, or Croatian kuna? And even more importantly, will you be able to do so quickly whilst a market seller or shop keeper is throwing numbers at you as they try to counter your haggling skills? Not everyone is a mathematician, but you can guarantee that by the time you’ve spent a few months working out the value of your money in a variety of currencies, you’ll be much quicker at your sums and times tables than you ever were at school.

Learning Life Lessons

We all leave school and go out into the world thinking we know it all. In fact, we’ve probably thought that since we turned into teenagers, but the reality is we only really start learning life’s lessons when we venture out into the world on our own for the first time. A gap year is likely to be a time of many firsts; whether it’s the first time you’ve done your own laundry, the first time you’ve been outside of Europe, or the first time that you’ve lived away from home. Regardless of how experienced in life you believe yourself to be as you depart, you will come back a whole lot more clued up. The only way to learn about life is to go out there and live it - and that is exactly what a gap year is for.

So, you might be heading off on your gap year to leave all the learning behind you, but don’t be surprised if you end up improving the old grey matter purely by accident while you’re away.

About the Author

Mark Bottell is the General Manager for Worldwide Experience, an online tour operator offering extended breaks on "http://www.worldwideexperience.com" >gap year and other holidays for adults.

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/Mark-Bottell/95891

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