This week’s word is VISA, and it and I did not get along. I tried writing this three separate times, and finally am just posting one so I don’t have to look at it. I used the word as a travel visa, and we are following Andy, who decided to take a gap year, and does not regret it.
It wasn’t until you tried to pack everything you needed for a year into two suitcases that you realized how much stuff you had, and how little of it was really necessary.
It had started a few months ago with early acceptance into the ivy league, and a sense of overwhelming dread at hopping out of the frying pan and straight into the fire.
By the time her friends had gotten their acceptances, she had already quietly deferred her own start date, acquired a work vise, and made a plan for her gap year as well as a story to sell it all to her parents.
It was the best decision she had ever made, not because she enjoyed it, she hated every second of it from travelling alone, to the hostel living , to the part time job she had tutoring English as a second language.
Suddenly a career path that involved living out of a suitcase seemed like a prison sentence rather than a dream job, and the lie of using the trip to ‘find herself’ went from being something she told nosy people to a reality.
While everyone told her she was throwing away her future, she knew that if she went now, all she would be doing was throwing away her time and money in pursuit of a degree she wouldn’t use, and after all, it was her life to waste, wasn’t it?
Anne McSommers' Writing Nook 
Her life to waste. For a little while years ago, I started watching a soap opera called One Life To Live, but I called it One Hour To Waste. 😛
–Shay
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One year to work and travel, in the big scheme of things, probably won’t set her back very far.
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There are two different levels of realization in the first and last paragraph.
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It’s likely turn out to be one of the best decision in life she has made.
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Very well written. I especially liked that first paragraph about all the stuff we have and the stories one has to tell parents and those nosy enough to ask when one makes those leaps.
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A trip that proved to be an epiphany: wonderful story.
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You may feel unsure about it, but I think this story turned out quite well. I really liked the sentence, “Suddenly a career path that involved living out of a suitcase seemed like a prison sentence rather than a dream job, and the lie of using the trip to ‘find herself’ went from being something she told nosy people to a reality.”
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acquired a work vise. (I think you meant visa?). Often its the hardships that teach us the most…
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Thank you, I will correct that one
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Life demands taking risks. At that time of life, not child, yet not having reached full maturity either, it can be quite frightening. Congrats to the MC for following through with her gut and taking the gap year. Experience often takes us further than a 4 year degree.
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Makes perfect sense. All the ducks in a row, then take time to breathe a different kind of challenge. How’s that gonna do anything but m iij ndfully enrich?
Well done, you!
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*mindfully*
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