I took a gap year for many reasons. One of them was to earn
money, another was to be able to relax with my friends and family and the third
reason was to prepare myself for university.
Growing up in a Christian house-hold, I’d lived a pretty
sheltered life, I hadn’t yet gone out clubbing in my local town and I was very
much the occasional party-goer. For
some reason it’s just never been my scene and I’m okay with that.
Most of my friends went to university straight from college
and I was one of few that either took a gap year or chose to go against the
idea of university. So I had heard of the numerous stories that my friends
would tell me about university, how going out most nights was the norm and how
student life was a penniless life. Most of these stories turned me away from
going to university and for the longest time I didn’t even have any idea what I
wanted to study.
At the beginning of my gap year I started blogging. My very
first post on this blog was on October 7th and who knew it would
inspire me to pursue writing at a degree level. I have adored writing for the
longest time and now I had the chance to really take it seriously. I would
encourage you now to take the subject that you are most passionate about, right
now, make the decision, YOUR decision and no one else’s. Choose what you love
and what you do as your profession will follow attached to it, never give up,
never choose something that is the most “financially—stable”. Doing a degree
that you have no love for whatsoever proves 3 or 4 hard, boring years of your
life studying just because you have to or because “that’s what’s expected of me”.
And of course many of you will be thinking “but what about being realistic?”
what’s suddenly not so realistic about taking a step closer toward your dream?
I will be real with you now in saying that of course it was
not easy, at times questions like “what are you doing with your life?”
bombarded my mind and all these negative thoughts and invisible pressures I had
placed on myself and what others had, with no intention of their own, placed on
me. At times I felt trapped, lonely and vulnerable. I felt like I had amounted
to nothing, I was going nowhere, I had no destination but I was simply floating
aimlessly with no purpose whatsoever.
The Lord held me together in my gap year.
Taking a gap year made me think. It cleared my head and made
me stop and appreciate the life I would be leaving behind for a short while. It
taught me to love the company of my family and my friends and to reflect on the
roots I had placed into the foundations of my life in this place I will forever
call my home. It enabled me to be able to choose what I wanted to do at
university in my own time rather than my college’s time or my parent’s time.
How often will I be able to take a year’s break without having to worry about
bills and money? If anything I feel like a gap year should be called a
breathing year. A time where you can clear your head from school, exams,
stress, deadlines for a few moments and to learn. It was a year of learning for
me. Not in the education-sense but a learning curve for independence and
learning about myself, what I liked, enjoyed, adored and disliked. It gave me
time to write and more importantly time to learn more about the Lord. I was
able to spend whole days in His presence and I was able to learn from seasons
of barren and dry land. He placed people in my life that could teach me, that
inspired me and that I could trust. He taught me trust in Him, trust in who I am
becoming, who He is moulding me to be and teaching me His ways.
I believe He was preparing me for university from the start,
even when I hadn’t decided whether or not I was going. The lessons I learnt in
my gap year, helped me in my university life, even now I’m still seeing
correlations between it all. This life and love that He has brought me to, I
was never fully aware of until right now, sitting on my bed in my halls,
reflecting on everything. It’s so strange to come to the realisation of what He’s
done, what and who He is. I never thought this time a year ago that I would be
here, my last year of college was a stressful year for me, almost as if I had
nearly ruined all of my chances but He redeemed me and gave me opportunity and
when I got here, everything fell into place. Of course not all of it was
happiness on a stick but the majority of aspects of my university life, the
friends I’ve met, the course I’m on, the church I go to and the
extra-curricular activities I have involved myself in has me saying “This is
where You called me to be” and that is what I’ve been saying and what He’s been
saying over me since I got here. Even though it was incredibly hard to watch
every move on into new chapters in their life, I held steadfast on Him knowing
that He would lead me to where I needed to go. So here I am, living out the
story He’s written and continuously writing for me and I can safely say that I’ve
never felt so sure of where I’ve needed to be.
Rosalind xoxo
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