Review
Recommended reading. --The Guardian Whether you want to work as an au pair in the Netherlands, with disadvantaged children in Romania, teach English in Japan or pick avocados in Israel, this is the book you need. Recommended. --Overseas Jobs Express Provides a comprehensive guide to opportunities, sound assessment of the risks and rewards, and accounts from more than 100 young people who have already filled the gap year. --The Daily Telegraph A wealth of information --The Independent
Book Description
Everything you need for a year out to remember
Product Description
Your Gap Year - everything you need for the adventure of a lifetime! The definitive handbook for students wanting to make the most of a year off before further education. Your Gap Year is the essential book for all young people planning a gap year before continuing with their education. This up to date guide provides essential information on specialist Gap Year programmes available as well as the vast range of jobs and voluntary opportunities available to young people around the world. Catering to all possible desires for how to spend a year, there is detailed information on how to gain qualifications and skills from your gap year, or details on how to join an expedition if that s your preference. The guide includes a country by country guide to gap year opportunities and is illustrated with first hand accounts from travellers to show you what you can expect.
From the Author
Preface
Your gap year is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Don't waste it. As you approach the end of school or university, you will be bombarded with choices. Remember, this year out is your gap year, not your parents' or your friends', and you can create whatever combination of experiences you want. Most gap years comprise a medley of activities which complement one another; home and abroad, work and play, earning and spending, challenge and self-indulgence.
The rising popularity of gap years has prompted a dramatic increase in the number of programmes and schemes targeted at young people. The range of choices can be overwhelming: studying lemurs in Madagascar; teaching English to Burmese refugees; doing work experience with the BBC; spend¬ing the summer at an American summer camp; learning Spanish in Guatemala. Many gappers will simply want to go backpacking and this new edition includes a new section on how to maximise your travelling fun while keeping to a realistic budget.
The wealth of both mainstream and obscure options is canvassed in the pages that follow. The pos¬sibility of arranging a DIY gap year without the shelter of an umbrella organisation is also covered. From time to time a critical voice is raised in the press arguing that paying a company to arrange your gap year is exploitative. Sifting the responsible wheat from the profit-mongering chaff is no easy task when faced with the jumble of schemes vying for attention. Here you will find solid advice on how to avoid disappointment and rip-offs.
Over the years I have been in touch with hundreds of gap year students, including more than a hundred for this edition. Occasionally, a gap year story is particularly inspiring. When 18-year-old Matt Riddell first saw the school in Zambia where he was to spend the next three months, he felt like breaking down in tears because he had not been expecting to see such desolation. Since returning to his home in Portsmouth he has set up a fund for Nalituwe Basic School, raised more than £1,300 by doing a sponsored walk, and plans to return soon to oversee some repair work.
In reply to those who still feel some knee-jerk resistance to the idea of `interrupting' an education to take a year out, I would say that education consists of so much more than books and exams. Never mind the emotive prose about the life-changing or CV-enhancing experience of taking a gap year, the key benefits are to have a rest from studying, to see the world through fresh eyes, and most of all to have fun.
This book is brimming with inspiration, guidance and concrete advice for prospective gappers. The path to exciting and memorable gap year experiences may be smoother than you think.
Susan Griffith
Cambridge
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Inside Flap
For an adventure of a lifetime get THE guide to take you there…
From the Back Cover
Lose yourself in Las Vegas, encounter the beauty of Bolivia or soak up the sun on Bondi beach…
With the current economic climate and scarcity of graduate jobs, there has never been a better time to take a gap year. The world’s leading gap year specialist Susan Griffith reveals the best and most up-to-date information and advice you need for exploring every corner of the globe.
From what to pack to where to party, inside you’ll find:
Fundraising ideas to pay for your trip
Unmissable jobs and opportunities
Insider advice on how not to get ripped off
Budget tips so you don’t run out of cash
Plus, hidden travel secrets with a host of real life accounts from gapers who have been there and done it!
“A wealth of information”
The Independent
About the Author
Susan Griffith is the author of a number of acknowledged classics including Gap Years for Grown-ups, Taking a Gap Year, Teaching English Abroad and Work Your Way Around the World, which has been personally updated by her over its 13 editions. Susan specialises in writing books and articles for travellers who want to work and volunteer abroad and, as well as being a contributing editor to the respected US magazine Transitions Abroad since the early days of its publication, Susan also contributes occasional articles to the travel pages of The Independent and The Times
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
ONCE IN A LIFETIME As James Bond failed to notice, you only live once. Superlatives such as ‘amazing’, ‘incredible’ and even ‘blissful’ pepper the travel reminiscences of people who have had adventurous gap years, even the ones who have spent the first six months working behind the till at their local supermarket in order to save enough funds. A once-in-a-lifetime experience need not require any derring-do. Cycling through Patagonia or tracking the endangered black rhino is not for everyone. It could simply be breaking away from your friendship group to work in a ski resort in the Canadian Rockies or leaving home for the first time to go InterRailing or surviving the uncomfortable bus journey from Bangkok to Siem Reap. Nothing can compare with the joy of the open road. Certainly not overdue term papers and a late student loan payment. The sense of possibility and adventure while travelling brings feelings of exhilaration, long submerged in the everyday routines of school and home. Cheap air travel has opened up parts of the globe once reserved for the sons and daughters of the seriously affluent. When travelling in far-flung corners of the world, you suddenly escape the deadlines, the chores, the clutter, the feeling of stagnation when you have been doing the same old thing for a long time. Even 18 year olds can get into ruts. Travelling spontaneously means you have the freedom to choose from an infinite spectrum of possibilities. Those who have experienced independent travel usually catch the bug and long to visit more places, see more wonders and spend a longer time abroad. Today trekking in the hinterland of Rio de Janeiro or diving in the Philippines can be within the grasp of ordinary school leavers and college graduates. The longing might stem from a fascination left over from childhood with an exotic destination such as Madagascar or Spitsbergen. The motivation might come from a friend’s reminiscences or a television travelogue or a personal passion for a certain culture or natural habitat or sport. At some point in your schooling a vague idea begins to crystallise into an actual possibility. That is the point at which the purple prose of brochure-speak must be interrupted by hard-headed planning. The first question is always: how can I afford such a trip? How can ordinary people possibly move their dreams on to reality? The conventional means to an exciting end is to work and save hard. A grim spell of working overtime and denying yourself a social life is one route to being able to join an overland expedition through East Africa, a dive instructor’s course on a Greek island or a bungee-jump in New Zealand. Picking up bits and pieces of work and volunteering along the way can go some way to reducing the cost. Informal ways can be found of offsetting the cost of travel. Work-for-keep arrangements on a Canadian farm or Costa Rican eco-lodge will mean that you have to save far less than if you booked a long-haul package holiday to those destinations – in some cases little more than the cost of the flight and onward transport.
