FBF #20: The Life-Changing Impact of a Gap Year

Five ideas and hacks to design an unforgettable gap year to recharge your academic battery

Greetings from Moab, Utah

Alhamdulillah, my family and I arrived Wednesday for a 12-day vacation during which, inshAllah, we plan to tour the “Mighty Five” national parks in southern Utah: Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Zion.

Just this morning after fajr, I set off on a hike to “Delicate Arch,” the iconic landmark on the Utah license plate. It was spectacular, mashAllah!

Haraka Baraka

“Haraka baraka” is a famous Arabic aphorism that has always resonated with me. It means that “movement brings blessings.” When we stay in one place doing the same thing day after day, we begin to stagnate, just like a pool of water becomes fetid and cannot be used to make wudu.

One of the ways to get out of these ruts and avoid stagnation is simply to start moving. While this can be as simple as going for a walk in your neighborhood, the apex of movement, at least for me, is travel.

Wanderlust hit me hard and early, thanks to some incredible trips that my parents took me on during my formative years. Whether it was driving across the country to a dude ranch in Montana, visiting Stonehenge and Stratford-on-Avon in England, or scrambling up scree slopes at Glacier National Park, our annual trips were one of the highlights of my childhood. One of my priorities as a parent is to give my own children these same travel opportunities.

The greatest trip of my life, without a doubt, was my “gap year” between high school and college. This experience, highlights of which I will share below, had a profound impact on the trajectory of my life, and I want to dedicate this week’s FBF to exploring the benefits of gap years.

Gap years are big in England and across Europe. They are a bit less common here in the States, and I think that is a real shame. If you do high school right, you should be exhausted by the end. Most college-bound students have burned the midnight oil for years, navigating a grueling academic load, time-consuming extracurriculars, and, if they’re lucky, some semblance of a social life. Senior spring is not sufficiently rejuvenating, and starting straight up in the fall at a demanding college is a recipe for burn out.

Having a chance to hit pause between high school and college is an immense blessing. It's sort of like a mini retirement when you are at your physical prime. Another ideal time for a gap year is immediately after college before entering the “real world.”

Potential Drawbacks of Gap Years

Of course, there can be drawbacks to gap years. One often cited is the cost. Depending on how you spend your time, this can certainly be a concern, but few students spend more on a gap year than the cost of one year’s tuition, and many end up working and earning money for at least part of their year off.

Another case against gap years is that they delay your entry by one year into the elusive world of “adulthood.” Many recent college grads, however, spend their early years after school aimlessly spinning their wheels in the mud, and a gap year often gives students a stronger sense of purpose.

Perhaps the strongest argument against gap years is that they can disrupt your educational momentum. Indeed, some students never get back on the academic horse after getting a taste of the real world. Without proper structure, gap years can result in the very stagnation they are seeking to prevent, leading to little more benefit than developing expertise in Netflix binge-watching or mastering the art of napping.

Transformational Benefits of Gap Years

When properly planned, however, gap years can prove transformational. They help develop critical real-world skills like adaptability, resilience, and problem-solving. They often consist of cultural immersion and help provide a global perspective that can be invaluable when designing your career.

While I would argue that taking a year off will yield significant benefits no matter how you spend it, it is nonetheless important to design a set of experiences that will stretch you. One thing I recommend is that you NOT take academic classes. If you have already gotten into a good college, chances are you have the academic bases covered. Therefore, almost by definition, that means you have been neglecting many other features of the human experience. My advice is simple: design a set of activities that stimulates the mind, body, and, most importantly, spirit. Some combination of travel, volunteering, employment, and soul-exploring retreats usually does the trick.

Here are five specific ideas, hacks, and stories about how to maximize the benefits of a gap year, whether right before or after college.

1) Gap Year Architecture

One of the most critical elements of a successful gap year is to come up with an “architecture” or organizing principle around which to design your experiences. For example, if part of your gap year involves travel, you might focus on “Volontourism,” become a “Culinary Explorer,” or set out on a “Literary Journey.” If you intend to spend some of it closer to home, you could design a “DIY Masterclass,” venture on a “Career Quest,” or even start your own business.

In my case, the first thing we did when it was confirmed that I would be taking a year off was meet with a gap year “architect” at Milton Academy. He had a rolodex (the internet was just coming together, lol) of opportunities both in the States and abroad and enormous insight into how to maximize the gap year opportunity.

The organizing principle we landed on was an “Art Odyssey,” and I made the intention to see as much of the art work I had studied in AP Art History as possible (see FBF #17: Museums and My Dad for more on this).

2) Highlights of My Gap Year

a. Round-the-World Ticket

Buying a RTW ticket was the engine of my gap year. Just as it sounds, this is a type of airline ticket that allows you to make as many stops as you want, provided you always fly in the same direction. They still exist—check out this guide. I flew west with stops in San Francisco, Hawaii, and Bangkok before arriving in Nepal.

b. Sojourn Nepal

This was a 3-month cultural immersion program that consisted of a 6-week homestay/language immersion segment in Kathmandu, followed by a month-long Himalayan trek, and culminating in a two-week rafting trip to Chitwan National Park in the south. Needless to say, it was magical.

c. India & Greece

After Nepal, I flew to India where I completed the Delhi-Agra-Jaipur triangle and saw the Taj Mahal. I next met my father and went to Greece, where we explored the Parthenon, Mycenae, and many of the other places he'd been dragging me to museums my whole life to learn about.

d. John Hall Venice

This was a six-week art history program in Venice, during which we attended Italian language courses and lectures with world-renowned art historians in the morning and then visited all the artwork we had studied in the afternoon. We would get lost in the serpentine alleys and canals and once, tragicomically, killed a pigeon in Piazza San Marco with an errant frisbee throw. I brought my own kids to experience the magic of Venice at this time last year.

e. Eurail Pass and Backpacking in Europe

The final three months of my gap year consisted backpacking throughout Europe by purchasing a Eurail pass, sort of land-based RTW ticket that allows unlimited travel in Europe. I visited Florence, Rome, Sicily, Monaco, Nice, Paris, Bruges, Amsterdam, Prague, Warsaw and more, including a haunting trip to Auschwitz.

3) Vagabonding

While I consider myself a fairly seasoned traveler, I am a true amateur compared to Ralph Potts, author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel and the world authority on budget travel.

As with many things, I first learned of Ralph from the Tim Ferriss podcast. He has done three episodes: #41 & 42: Travel Tactics, Creating Time Wealth, and Lateral Thinking and #624: The Vagabond’s Way, Tactics for Immersive Travel, Pilgrimages and Psychogeography, Falling Upward, and More. All are worth a listen if you want to really up your travel game.

Potts encourages readers to embrace the mindset of a vagabond, someone who seeks meaningful connections with locals, immerses themselves in different cultures, and values experiences over possessions. He emphasizes the transformative power of travel, the importance of embracing uncertainty, arguing that these are the moments that often result in the most memorable and life-changing experiences.

4) Spiritual Immersion

I think gap years are especially important for Muslim teenagers. Whether it involves memorizing the Quran, spending time “fee sabeel Allah” with the Tablighi jamaat, or a deep dive into the Arabic language, a year devoted to spiritual development can yield everlasting fruits.

Over the past few years, there has been an explosion of one-year Muslim spiritual enrichment programs designed to deepen one’s connection with Islam and build a deeni foundation for life. While I am sure they all provide significant benefit, I have seen the transformative effect of three programs in particular:

a) Tayseer Seminary in Knoxville, TN

Two ANA students have spent a life-changing year here studying under my brother-in-law Shaykh Hassan Lacchheb, my former CASA classmate Dr. Michael Dann, and the remarkable Ustadha Zaynab Ansari.

b) Qasid Institute in Amman, Jordan

Qasid is the gold standard when it comes to Arabic immersion programs, and one year there will dramatically improve your ability to understand the Quran and Hadith in their original language.

c) Tanwir Intensive at DarusSalaam in Chicago, IL

This one-year Arabic & Islamic Studies program promotes religious literacy. It promises that you will have “love for Islam radiating from within your souls, permeating your thoughts and actions, and opening your hearts to your true purpose.”

5) Gap Year Cousin: Study Abroad

For those who can’t convince their parents to allow them to take a full gap year, I highly encourage ALL college students to consider taking advantage of gap year’s first cousin: study abroad programs. While this option is more emphasized at some universities than others, nearly all offer some form of study abroad.

Unlike gap year programs, there is typically formal academic study attached to these programs, usually at accredited international universities. I spent my junior spring at the American University of Cairo, studying Arabic and even taking a course on Legal Maxims (Al-Qawaid Al-Fiqhiyyah) with a professor from Azhar University. I credit my time in Egypt with my second “conversion” to Islam when I decisively decided to devote myself to the deen for life.

My wife spent her entire junior year in Florence, Italy, the highlight of her college career at Tufts. This experience is one of the things that first drew me to her during our courtship.

I hope that this newsletter has helped convince reluctant parents and students of the myriad benefits of gap years. When I finally arrived back home after nine months on the road in June of 1997, I came armed with experiences and exposures to different world views that have continued to inform me to this day. I was infinitely more prepared and mentally fresh to throw myself into my freshman year at Harvard. May Allah bring you all many of the same benefits. Ameen!