By Dr. Peter Slowe

The Gap Year opportunity comes once in a lifetime. When else will you have a whole year with almost no pressure?

What about when you’ve graduated and urgently need a job? Not a great time to take a long break.

When you get bored with your job and want a career break? There’ll be the mortgage, the missed promotion, your partner, both kids.

When you retire? OK, if you live that long and you don’t have a heart condition – and you don’t have to work till you’re 82 because there are no pensions.

Just take a Gap Year now! Start dreaming and planning. The year is yours. No parent, teacher or bank manager has the right to take it away from you. The opportunity simply won’t come round again. Miss it and that’s that.

There are quite a number of arguments you might have to face down when you decide to have a gap year.

“It’s just a middle-class rite of passage”. So what? Most people are middle-class – and besides, what’s wrong with a rite of passage?

“You’ll forget how to study”. Why should you? Are you going to forget how to go to the pub or forget your name? We’re talking about a year, not three decades.

Then there are the tedious arguments – but they are all on your side too. Most university departments now think a Gap Year is a good thing because it reduces drop-out rates. UCAS, most vice-chancellors and a whole spread of the great and good have all issued statements at one time or another saying a Gap Year is a Good Thing because of the extra experience and maturity it brings.

These are all important arguments, but there is something else, something more difficult to argue in public but no less valid than any other part of the debate. It is the intrinsic value of the gap year. Even if it couldn’t be justified as a career-move or a CV-builder (though it will probably be both of these anyway), it has worth as and of itself. It’s like justifying the study of history or the classics, which have their own real value. They enhance life. So does a Gap Year. It is the right thing to do and you don’t have to justify it any more. Go for it!