Mind the Gap: Taking a Year Off

Whether it be for a week, a month, a semester, or a full year, traveling is on almost every collegiettes’ undergrad bucket list. So when two of my closest friends, Shannon and Emily, returned home for a two week break in their three-country gap year abroad before freshman year, I was dying to hear all about their adventures and get some pointers on how they got the most out of their experience abroad while not breaking their bank accounts ($700 total for a month in Dublin?! I think yes!).These girls prove that with the right attitude and some smart planning, time spent abroad can be the most memorable part of anyone’s college experience.
 

Shannon and Emily, who after this February will have completed a six month venture across Costa Rica, Peru, and Ireland, offer a modest word of advice to anyone looking to travel abroad: just ask! “Asking around is the best way to find out about travel programs,” says Shannon. “We arranged our stay in Costa Rica through our high school Spanish teacher. If you reach out, you’ll get where you want to go.” This is especially true at the university level, as Boston University is crawling with connections to every country on earth. We’re paying tuition for all these resources, so why not use them?

Pictured: Emily Carter (left) and Shannon Eddy (right)
 

In terms of which is better, traveling through a program or arranging your own stay, the girls agree that each have their own benefits. If you’re looking for cheap travel, setting up your own travel arrangements, like the girls did while teaching English in Costa Rica, is usually the best way to go. “Room and board for the full four months was $500, because we were living with a host family, and food and things are generally cheaper there.” The pair then spent the month of December participating in a program deep in the jungles of Peru. Despite the higher cost of their stay, the girls found that they got what they paid for. “With a program, there’s more of an agenda of what you’re going to be doing, whereas in Costa Rica things were sometimes unorganized.” Still, the girls insist that you can get an amazing experience either way.
 

Throughout their travels, Shannon and Emily picked up on some helpful resources for saving money. The pair agreed that the most expensive part of their trip by far was the cost of their plane tickets. For all of their flights, they consulted kayak.com, an awesome website where you can compare the prices of hundreds of travel sites at once. According to Shannon and Emily, this site is the place for the cheapest airplane tickets. They also raved about the aid they received from student travel agencies along the way, as they were able to help the girls find the best deals for their budgets. 
 

However, the cheapest opportunity that the girls found was through a program called “WWOOF.” The term comes from www.wwoof.org, an acronym that stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. The website, which Emily calls “Match.com for travelers,” lists organic farms located in different regions of the world that host travelers in exchange for helping out on their farms. Room and board is free because travelers work for their stay. You can personalize the kind of experience you want to have, be it with animals, near a city, small/big farm, etc. Currently, Emily and Shannon are in Dublin, Ireland where they will be working on a small organic farm for the next month. 
 

Some students shy away from the idea of traveling during college years because throughout the chaos of college life, planning a trip can seem pretty daunting. But Shannon firmly believes that there’s no better time than now to travel: “The way I think about it is, in a few years I’m going to find a job and work really hard doing that forever, so why not go do something interesting now?” Considering how intimidating college debts and job searches are after graduating, Shannon definitely has a point. “When you miss a semester, you’re missing a semester of the same thing. So why not do the same thing, but in Greece, China, or Nepal?”
 

Emily, like many other collegiettes, had no idea what she wanted to major in when she started thinking about college last spring. Says Emily about her choice to go abroad, “I wanted to get a better sense of what I’m passionate about, so traveling made perfect sense for me.”
 

Although the last stretch of their gap year adventure is just beginning, the girls already agree that everything about the past six months has been life-changing. “Everything we do, we learn something new. Like after teaching English, I know that teaching is not for me!” says Emily. “But more than that, it’s about the independence we have after living in Latin America alone for five months. It’s about the confidence we gained. Like if we can do this, we can do anything.”
 

When asked a final message that they’d like to send to anyone looking to travel abroad, Shannon puts it simply: “Everyone should travel. Everyone. There’s something for everyone out there. The question isn’t why should you do it, it’s why not?”