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GapYear is a time for growth and happiness.
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To those who will take a gap year in the futureRather than vague encouragement about the future, I want to say, "You've worked hard."It was something a senior colleague said to me when I resigned, and hearing "you've worked hard" touched me the most. It made me realize I had lived diligently enough to deserve that recognition, and it gave me courage. - Bangkok volunteer work I undertook to find meaning in life after resigning / Park So-yeon, gap year participant |
61st Gap Year GapperPark So-yeon
Gap year period:April 2016 – July 2016 (total 12 weeks)
Volunteer work in Bangkok I undertook after resigning to find meaning in life.
Currently, South Korea,
Each year 60,000 middle and high school students drop out, 346,000 people in their 20s are idle because they have no dreams, and the turnover rate within one year of employment has entered the 40% range,It is said that 75% of university students are not satisfied with college life, and more than 80% of workers do not feel happy.Many people say "dream," but there are no practical methods or support. To solve this problem,We aim to bring the 'gap year' to South Korea as well.
Gap yearis a period for pausing or stepping away from studies and work to engage in various activities such as volunteering, travel, internships, education, and entrepreneurship,It's a time to decide the direction to move forward and is a practice encouraged in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
*Check out the Gap Year website for a variety of experiences!(Click)
# At some point, I became unaccustomed to the idea of resting.
At some point, I became unaccustomed to resting.I think I just kept running straight ahead without stopping, to the point where I felt anxious if I did nothing. After graduating university, I got a job right away and worked for nearly two years. There was stress from work, but...I don't know why, but day by day my body grew exhausted, and my temperament became more sensitive and sharp. I think I came to understand what it felt like just to get through each day.
After enduring and enduring like that, one day this thought suddenly came to me.
"Is it okay to live like this? There are so many things I haven't tried yet—will I end up spending my life only working?"
Although I knew I would work again someday, it felt like a huge waste of time to build a career only by working without experiencing or trying anything. It was also scary.
So when I started thinking about what I liked, I reconsidered graduate school—which I hadn't even dared to dream about because of reality—and decided I should do something more meaningful than just blindly preparing for graduate school. And...I decided to make 2016 a sabbatical I gave myself and chose to take a gap year.
At first I worried, looking at my bank balance, whether it was really okay to take a gap year. But there was a savings account I had opened following a colleague when I first got a job. I had two savings accounts set up with automatic transfers, and unexpectedly one of them matured just as I was deciding to take the gap year, so I was able to secure the funds a bit more comfortably.
Thanks to my colleague, I used it very usefully and still am. I also did a short part-time job after quitting and right up until departure to save a bit more travel money. Until then it had been money I spent on snacks or living expenses, and investing such a large sum at once worried me, but now I think it was the most useful and valuable money I've spent.
# I'm really glad I told people around me that I was leaving.
The hardest part during preparation was when I badly sprained my ankle a month before departure, ended up in a cast, and went to the clinic every day. I pretended to be fearless and brave, but I'm actually quite fearful. I cried a lot and worried a lot. With my ankle injured and in a cast, and with talk about the Zika virus and Southeast Asia, I was honestly very scared.
So I even wondered whether it was a sign from the heavens not to take the gap year and whether I shouldn't go. But I had already told people around me about the gap year and had already quit my job...It had truly become something irreversible.In the end I decided to go, and fortunately the cast came off a week before departure so I could walk normally and I went to Thailand.It was the moment I thought I was really glad I'd told people around me that I was leaving.
#Thinking it really had to be now or never, I decided to let 2016 just go with the flow of life.
At first, many people were worried, and I also thought about it a lot, but,Thinking that if not now then never, I decided to let the currents of life carry me through 2016.After quitting my job I suddenly had a lot of time, so before leaving for Thailand I tried writing a book by myself, took daytime walks along the Han River, went to lectures I wanted to hear, and spent time doing the things I had wanted to try.
I also came to understand what small, simple happiness really is; I had always been so busy,As I relaxed, even Seoul — which I had been living in thoughtlessly — looked new, and my family and friends, who had always been there, all appeared renewed.
After enjoying a slow life for a month, I finally went to Thailand with a hopeful heart. The first two weeks at the center were very monotonous because the schools I was assigned to hadn't started yet; I spent the whole day giving English lessons to a friend who was soon going to study in Norway, and in the afternoons I helped little children from an international school with their homework.
Of course, the friend about to study abroad would sometimes be upset all day because they missed their classmates, and there were times I had to coax and soothe the little kids who didn't want to do their homework.
In early May the schools began to open one by one and classes started in earnest. I ended up teaching more classes than any other volunteer at the center: from 9 to 11 a.m. I taught four classes. When teaching those lovely children, I didn't mind sweating so much, but on days when the temperature neared 40 degrees and I relied only on a fan for two hours of classes I would be completely drained by the time I went home.
Perhaps because late April and early May are the hottest times, by the time the program ended I had adapted so completely that I hardly noticed the heat. Indeed, once you adapt to something, there seems to be nothing you can't handle.
Since I had no classes in the afternoons, I attended a private Thai language school. Unlike life at the center, studying with people from many countries taught me not only Thai but also more about Thailand. There were expatriates posted here, freelancers working in Thailand this year, people who came as tourists and fell in love with the country and decided to stay, and so on — reallyI learned that there are many different ways of life.
Meeting people who led lives completely different from the ones I knew expanded my horizons. After taking Thai class and returning to the center, I switched from student back to teacher, helping little kids with homework and teaching evening classes for 12–14 year olds. Teacher in the morning, student in the afternoon, teacher again in the evening — morning and evening in the slums, afternoons in the busy district; it felt like living two different lives in a day.
Wednesdays were discount days at the cinema, so I sometimes went to the movies; on weekends I went out to eat delicious food with friends or toured Bangkok's sights alone; on long holidays I took planes to visit other cities, managing to juggle volunteering, studying, and travel. That's how I spent my time in Bangkok — relaxed yet busy.
#There seemed to be so many happy moments.
There seemed to be so many happy moments.The first day I taught a class, the first day a little child gave me a kiss, the day I met the family of a student at the market, the day the children gave me flowers on Teacher's Day, dancing and singing with the kids, the moments when children ran to hug me at the end of class — almost every moment was so pure and beautiful.
Among them, the most memorable episode was when I accompanied a little friend to a birthday party as their guardian. The child attended a fairly expensive international school with assistance, and at the party most of the children were expatriates' kids or children of Thailand's upper class.
I worried inwardly that the child might be misunderstood or ostracized, but one of the parents said she had worked for an NGO, understood the situation, and even expressed that she hoped to help the center by donating clothes and items she no longer used. After that, she personally brought toys and children's clothes, and what I remember most is that every time we met she cheered me on, saying I was doing a really good thing.
And the hardest moment was when a snake appeared in my house. It was the rainy season and the news was full of reports of snakes coming out of toilets and biting people's bottoms, so at the Thai school we joked to each other "watch out for snakes today" and then I went home — the very next day, while showering, a python rose up through the drain and I truly thought I would faint.
That accommodation wasn't a place where pythons usually appeared, but it had rained heavily where I was that day. Naked with just a towel, I screamed and ran out, barely managed to change clothes and get help, but I couldn't calm down and my hands were shaking. I was so frightened I even took a traditional herbal calming pill and evacuated into Bangkok proper to stay with a friend.
Even at that accommodation everyone was surprised since it had never happened before. They took measures to prevent pythons from coming out again, but I couldn't stay in that house and moved to another. I had heard before that snakes enter sewers to avoid heat or rain, and when I lived in Phuket I had seen a snake by the roadside, but when it actually happened right in front of me I couldn't calm down at all. Looking back I guess I overreacted, but at the time I was so scared I couldn't even wash my hands inside the house.
#I had been rushing through life without a single pause, but recently I feel like I can finally breathe a little.
After taking a gap year, I don't think anything has changed drastically for me personally. There was no grand revelation like my life changing, my dreams changing, or becoming certain about something. The biggest change is simply that my daily routine changed and my perspective on the world shifted a bit.
I had been rushing through life without even a pause, but these days I feel like I can breathe a little. I learned how to live more leisurely and how to notice the things immediately around me. Realizing that there are so many ways of living and so many stories in the world that I had been unaware of has made me see the world from a somewhat different perspective.
Also, I didn't notice it myself, but recently I often hear that my smile has become prettier. When I heard that and compared it with older photos, I realized I'm smiling much more widely than before. Maybe because I spend a lot of time with children and laugh more, smiling has become more natural on my face.
The gap year project is over, but my personal sabbatical is still ongoing. Last week I traveled to Singapore with my college friends under the name RE-UNION, and this coming weekend I'm planning to get my open-water scuba diving license. After that, I'm thinking of taking a short trip to southern Thailand and then to northern Thailand.
Also, recently I was able to get a round-trip ticket to the U.S. for almost the price of a one-way ticket, so I'll be going to the U.S. for about ten days to meet friends and travel. I don't know when I'll get another opportunity like this, so I'm trying to do everything. When I return to Korea, I will probably start seriously preparing for graduate school. Of course, if I get a job related to the field I want to study, I might not attend graduate school.
It's still unclear what kind of work I'll do when I return to Korea, but whatever it is, I want to live doing meaningful and valuable work.
# Tips for those considering a gap year
1) Don't be afraid– It's kind of like a roller coaster. While waiting and preparing you feel nervous, excited, worried, and scared, but once you're on it, it rushes by before you even have time to feel much. When you get off and look back, even the things that scared you become remembered as very fun and enjoyable memories.
2) Go with the flow– Wherever you go or whatever you do, unfamiliar things you haven't experienced before will happen. It might be an unfamiliar environment, unfamiliar people, or an unfamiliar culture.
If you try to interpret everything according to the memories and experiences you've had so far, there may be many things that are hard to understand or accept. However, accepting things to some extent and going with it seems to be the quickest way to adapt.
3) Don't be impulsive– If you haven't decided on a gap year yet, I recommend thinking it over once more. I don't think you should start a gap year impulsively or because you're swept up in it. That would be a true waste of time, money, and energy, wouldn't it?
Especially, if you are working like I am, you should be even more cautious.Unlike students who can simply return to school, you may not have a place to return to after a gap year, so it's important to clearly define what you want to try enough to give up your current stable job, and why you want to do it.If you still feel you really must do it and that there's no time like the present, gather your courage and start.
#You've worked hard.
To those planning a gap yearRather than vague encouragement about the future, I'd like to tell them, "You've worked hard."This was something my senior at work said to me when I resigned, and hearing "you've worked hard" was the most touching. It made me feel that I had lived hard enough to deserve hearing that, and it somehow gave me more courage.
These days many people are being pushed around and live without even a moment to reflect on themselves; I think it's important to take time to feel who you are. You've done well so far :)
'The 100 Gap Year Gappers' are not mentors who exist on TV or in books.They are the stories of people who were a little braver and took that bravery a little earlier than I did.We hope the stories of 100 people who were in similar situations and had similar concerns will offer some small help when you face important decisions in your life.
Recommendations and submissions for the 100 Gap Yearers are always welcome.
Please leave a comment or send a message, or email our marketing manager Da-young Choi at choi@koreagapyear.com!