Advice when you take gap year but rest of friendship group is going to Uni

[Cheesywotsits123]

If your young person decides to take gap year how will they manage when friends head off to uni? I'm not sure this aspect has been given any thought but it's in my head and want to ask advice.

What is the young person doing on the gap year?

DD is in this position now. She's had the summer off to have fun with her mates but now they are heading off to their next chapter, she's starting to job hunt. She knows she will be lonely but is hoping work and joining a gym will help, plus we get on v well so like hanging out together. I'm expecting it to be a difficult few months at least.

The key thing is what they're doing. If they have a job then they'll be busy anyway.

Back in the mists if time I took a gap year and worked. I made new friends at work, visited my uni friends, saved up and had a good year. It soon goes.

They have a great year, go to uni and make a whole bunch of extra friends. It’s no big deal tbh as long as they are doing something they value during the year

Exactly. The key is that they are doing something that absorbs them, whether it’s travel or work experience or whatever, not just hanging around feeling left behind.

DD struggled at first when all her friends went to university. As soon as she got a job and made some new friends she was fine. She visited a few of them as well.

It can be a hard time I think. My nephew took a year out because he wanted to go to UCL so he needed some extra money. He got a full time job in a supermarket and his friends all went to university. He did go and stay with them once in a while but I think it was hard. They were having the time of their lives and he was in a completely different situation. When you are at school/college your social life is just laid on for you.

When he went to university a year later he was fine

I deliberately booked DD on a cookery course for the week when her friends had gone. I did not want her to get into a habit of staying in bed. She had a job as a chalet host starting late November. The cookery school let her stay on as a potwasher/intern so she effectively attended almost three months of different courses. If not she would have probably taken a short term job, probably a vacancy created by a returning student, or signed up for a hospitality agency. Chalet jobs are now harder to get unless you have an EU passport. She also did Camp America in the summer which she enjoyed.

Throw themselves wholeheartedly into something new: job, volunteering, planning travel, etc. The first two would involve making new friends, anyway. The latter would presumably involve calls & online messaging. Just make sure they don't stay in their existing rut.

This was DS last year.

There have been times when he's felt he has been in the doldrums. But he's worked - and enjoyed it mostly, all year, had a fun summer, and socialised with a much wider circle of people.

My dd had a job all through 6th form and saved up so did interrailing this summer with her friends who are off to uni, and yesterday has just gone off to South America travelling for 3 months, the same weekend as many of them head to uni for freshers week. She will come back before Xmas and get a job for a few months to top up her coffers before she decides on her next plan of action. I think that is better than working through this period of change for all her friends and being the one left at home…

Get a job

Save money

Go travelling in a India and SE Asia

Tell uni mates tales of smoking opium in the Golden Triangle, raving at full moon parties, pulling some attractive Swedish backpacker.

They will be well jell

My DD was seriously ill and so her “gap” year was really a lost year.
However, out of her friendship group: one failed an A level so ended up on gap year to study and resit, one went to Uni & hated the course so dropped out and worked and reapplied on different course.

So she isn’t the odd one out, her group has several that are one year ahead of several others. I told her that is life, sometimes things go to plan, other times you are on a slightly longer path and one year is not much time at all in the long run.

I’m not sure the idea of her child taking addictive class A drugs is going to cheer OP up really

Opium isn’t too bad in that respect contrary to popular belief