Gap Yah

There’s a quoting phenomenon going around campus at the minute and it’s been sparked by infamous viral clip ‘Gap yah’, where a ‘rah’ gap year student retells his holidaying experiences. I can’t seem to go on any night out, hall party, or even just sit in the kitchen without hearing “...and then I chundered EVERYWHAR” and I’m getting absolutely sick of it!

On the first day in halls, we had all already discussed who had and hadn’t had gap years. Five had and five hadn’t, and I didn’t really think much of it at first. Kitchen conversation often brought us to discussions of times people had spent in exotic places like Thailand, South Africa and Amsterdam, and a lot of the time they were very interesting stories. By interesting I mean that frequently they were about experiences under the influence.

One evening a flatmate had some friends over in his room and in discussion, one of his friends commented that “Those who have had gap years are on a different level to those that haven’t” or something along those lines, explaining that they had grown more. I found him rather condescending and was a bit annoyed, so I went to moan about it to another flatmate who told me “Most people need gap years to learn things mummy and daddy haven’t taught them.” But is this true? Is there a divide between gap year students and those straight off the A-level bandwagon?

For about six months I was actually planning to have a gap year myself. I moved across the country on my own, got two well-paying jobs and had basically abandoned my life back in my hometown of Leicester. But it happened that exam results day fell bang in the middle of a family holiday I had agreed to go on, so at 6am I checked my results on my phone by walking around the Sheringham streets in Norfolk to steal someone’s wi-fi, and was shocked to see my better than expected results. It was then I decided to go to university, and to take on another dramatic move. Six weeks later I was at York, and thrown into a life I hadn’t really anticipated.

Now though, I often regret not taking a gap yah. All my friends have gone to such amazing places, and yes maybe they wasted time ‘chundering everywhere’, but time having fun is never time wasted. Personally, I didn’t need a gap year to learn life experience about living alone as I already lived independently, but it would have been more for fun, and experiencing being young whilst I still was. Of course a lot of students seem to have a level of pretention when recounting their travels, and as the gap yah student says “the sun was just rising and glinting off the snow creating this sort of ethereal haze”, then 20 seconds later talks about his “vomcano”. It’s true though; people are in beautiful places and they’re getting smashed, but this is modern youth culture and I want to be a part of it!

I was invited to go travelling this summer, and was really excited about the idea. But on realisation that I’d have to be paying for my York accommodation over the summer, I knew that this wasn’t really an option money-wise. But I’m not saying cry me a river; I’m not bitter at all, and have already planned what I want to do this summer in England which I’m really excited about. Nonetheless a big issue with gap years is money; anyone can have them but your background commonly dictates how you spend them. For example, Princess Eugenie going travelling around the world with bodyguards for a year is not something most could do if they were from, say, Leicester.

My friends currently having gap years have basically worked full time all year, and none of them have done the travelling they desired as they have been prioritising current living expenses and university savings. I’m sure if you ignored saving for university, you could comfortably go travelling after saving for a few months. The problem is that in this climate where everyone is expecting tuition fees to rise, people in less privileged backgrounds, or those who just miss out on getting support from the government, are constantly worried about expenses if they aspire to university.

Another contentious issue about gap years is why people actually do them. Is it to help a less privileged country, or just to have a good time? Looking through Facebook friends’ photos I often see people helping in a Thai or African school for a few days, but I can’t help but cynically think to myself, instead of paying so much money to go for a few days, that money could have probably been spent employing a teacher for a lot longer time. Yes, that’s horribly cynical, but isn’t it true?

It sort of answers my question too; gap years are about the experience. Whether it’s just getting pissed every night, seeing an “ethereal” far away country or helping those less advantaged, you’ll get some good memories. Saying that though, I definitely don’t believe they put you ahead of those who haven’t had them, but hey, I’m obviously biased. I’m sure travelling is amazing and one day I will go, whether it is this summer, or after my degree, I want to see the world however self-indulgent, or air-mile polluting gap years may be... banter!

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