Students urged to consider taking an ‘interim’ year off
By: Kara Alaimo
Last week, 1,185 Princeton University students joined the 43,000 teenagers across New Jersey who entered their freshman year of college. There’s a question being raised. Are they ready to make the most of their college experiences and thrive in the "real world" that lies not far ahead?
In "Time Out or Burn Out for the Next Generation," a seven-page report which was issued last fall by Harvard University, three university administrators deplore "the fast pace of growing up today" and its impact upon student readiness for higher education.
The report endorses the solution that Harvard already offers its students the opportunity to take a year off between high school and college to pursue and develop personal interests and talents. In fact, Harvard has been recommending this "interim year" for the past 30 years. About 20 percent of Harvard students take advantage of the opportunity.
The precollege sabbatical is common in the United Kingdom, where it is known as the "gap year." During Prince William’s gap year between Eton and Oxford, he did volunteer work in Chile and explored Africa. The concept is just beginning to gain popularity in the United States.
Holly Bull can vouch for the effectiveness of an interim year. After graduating from Princeton High School, she traveled to Hawaii and Greece before entering the University of Virginia. It was during this year as she cleaned out shrimp tanks as a volunteer at a Hawaiian oceanic institute that she decided against pursuing a career in marine biology.
Ms. Bull is now vice president of the Center for Interim Programs in Princeton, which matches students to programs throughout the world for a year of hands-on learning experiences before college. Founded by her father, Cornelius Bull, who manages their Boston office, the center has advised more than 3,000 students over the past two decades.
Princeton resident Rebecca Marshall took advantage of the center’s services and designed an interim year before entering the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Ms. Marshall traveled to Nepal in September 1999, where she learned the language and explored the country during her three-month stay. Her experiences included a home-stay with a family, an apprenticeship with a silversmith, a week and a half in a monastery meditating and learning Buddhism, and the experience of "trekking" (hiking and backpacking by day and setting up camp at night).
Ms. Marshall became so involved with her experience of Asia that she postponed her flight home to spend a week-and-a-half touring Thailand with newly made friends before returning to spend Christmas with her family in Princeton.
January 2000 brought Ms. Marshall to the American School for the Deaf in Connecticut, where she learned sign language and was a teacher’s aide in the preschool. She visited home in April, and in May was off to the Canadian Yukon, where she spent 45 days backpacking and canoeing with nine other people from the National Outdoor Leadership School.
Ms. Marshall then returned home for two weeks before finally heading off to start college.
Having now completed her freshman year of college, Ms. Marshall says that her interim year made her much more prepared for both college and life in general.
"I think everyone should take a year off … it gives you a chance to break out of the daily grind and makes you free to do things that you really care about. The interim year made me so self-confident, and taught me that there is so much more out there in the world to do than just go to school and get a job," Ms. Marshall said.
Ms. Bull agrees. "It’s very hard to tell what your passions are in a classroom. They just don’t originate there. Too many people plod their way through school and get a job but don’t like what they do because they don’t give themselves the time to figure it out," she said.
Ms. Bull reports that the interim year appeals to students of all academic and economic backgrounds. Weaker students who never excelled in the traditional education system often thrive when the world becomes their classroom. Stronger students who are burned out after years of studying emerge from interim years with renewed vitality and different perspectives on life.
In the spring, The New York Times published a story headlined "Before College, Year Off Beckons to Well Off." Ms. Bull has a problem with that. While the Center for Interim Programs charges a flat consulting fee of $1,900, scholarships are available to students who need them.
In addition, retired teacher Robert Gilpin offers interim year consulting for $50 online at www.whereyouheaded.com. And the $29.95 book, "Summer Opportunities for Kids and Teenagers" (Peterson’s, 2001), lists more than 1,800 programs, many of which run year-round, for children and teenagers.
Many programs offer free room and board in exchange for volunteer services. Some even include a stipend or college credit. Ms. Bull reports that many students work for a portion of their interim year to finance their travel.
The center suggests that students apply to college before their interim year and then request that their admission be deferred. Many schools are willing to do this for students pursuing worthwhile activities. An interim year also allows students who were rejected from the college of their choice to accumulate impressive credentials and then re-apply.
At the center’s Web site, www.interimprograms.com, visitors are asked, "If you could wave a magic wand, what would you do?" With more than 3,000 programs to choose from at the center alone, more and more students are responding, "I would make the world my classroom for a year."
Kara Alaimo is a journalism major at New York University. Her family home is in Hillsborough. Ms. Alaimo’s writing has been published in The Hillsborough Beacon, BOP teen magazine and The Catholic Spirit, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Metuchen.

