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Learning Gap

A large number of J's peers are taking a gap semester if not a gap year for reasons students echo in this PBS story.  It's interesting to see how differently kids are planning to use their semester or year off. Some of the most cautious and ambitious ones are combining online college with travel abroad and work. L is one such kid we know. She will be working for a whole academic year in a different country with some pretty serious time zone challenges to manage as she goes to her American college online from there. In effect she is combining college and gap year to make lemonade out of pandemic lemons.

She's always been a very determined person and would go way above and beyond her peers - so this comes as no surprise to anyone who knows her. The parents are both academicians and the mother got some advanced degree with two kids in middle and high school. Not a family of slackers that is for sure and maybe that is where L gets her incredible work ethic. What this kid is doing is very astute and she will likely come out better off as a result of the pandemic chaos. But not everyone is L - all gap year plans are not quite as well-formed and certainly not every kid is cut out to work this hard to achieve their goals. 


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