By Sammy Two weeks in a tiny room, shared with three other people. Feel free to leave the room, as long as you are okay with losing $30,000 and being kicked off the program, deported, and banned from coming back to Israel for the next ten years. Someone from another program left the room to […]
Gap Year
My Summer Internship – Building a Photolithography Machine
By Lizzy This summer, I interned at an Austin-based scientific computing company called Enthought. While Covid-19 forced many people to cancel their plans, I am extraordinarily lucky in that my father works for Enthought, and I was able to participate in the internship from home. The goal of my internship this summer was to provide […]
Being Flexible – It’s Not as Bad as It Seems
By Amelia In my last blog post, I wrote about preparing for a backpacking trip along a 65-mile stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail. But because of the wildfires raging all across the state, I had to make a few changes to my plan. Instead of backpacking along the PCT and braving the hazardous air […]
3 Ways My Gap Year Plans Have Changed (+1 Way I’ve Changed With Them)
By Sara When I made the decision back in May to join the Gap Year Program, I had grand aspirations and plans of working at a zoo, travelling the world, and learning a new language. While a global pandemic has certainly been enough to throw a wrench in all my plans, the past few months […]
11 Things I’ve Learned from Working in a Restaurant During the Pandemic
By Christina I have worked at Botiwalla, an Indian street food restaurant, in Atlanta’s most famous food hall located in Ponce City Market for the past few months. I have learned a lot from working in a restaurant and wanted to share 11 lessons I’ve learned so far. Work should not be so serious I have […]
Ann Arbor
By Maya I used to dream of palm trees, sandy beaches and salty air. I used to dream of being surrounded by new languages and old cultures. For as long as I can remember my mind was in love with everywhere that I was not. Despite obvious challenges, the last few months gave me the […]
My New Normal
By Lhamo I have been in quarantine for almost half a year, yet it still feels like there is no end in sight. I’ve been fortunate enough to have not caught Coronavirus thus far (at least, I think so, because I had a terrible “flu-like” disease in January that no doctor could definitively diagnose and I swear it was the […]
Preparing for Ethiopia
By Kate Hello everyone! My name is Kate and I am from New York City. This month I am preparing to move to Debre Birhan, Ethiopia, where I will be interning at a boarding school known as the Haile-Manas Academy. Over the course of the semester, I will serve primarily as a peer leader for freshmen […]
Why I Took A Gap Year
By Siddharth Having been born and raised in India, the notion of a gap year has always been fairly restricted to a specific segment of students – those who are unable to perform up to their expectations in the cutthroat entrance tests to the most prestigious universities in the country. If one wasn’t spending their […]
Planning Amid the Unpredictable
By Christina Long-term planning during a global pandemic presents challenges. We have all asked ourselves what the world will look like in a month and a year. Will elbow bumps replace handshakes? Will meetings continue on Zoom? Will travel return to normal? There is a lot we don’t know, both about the future and the virus, and […]