You may hesitate about taking a gap year, worrying that you may lose your mental alertness and adversely affect your studies when you do finally get to university or college. But this doesn't have to happen. It's possible for you to study during your time off, not in the concentrated way you did in high school, but taking courses or having learning experiences that concentrate solely on your own interests and desires.

There are multitudes of possibilities, some of them involving volunteer programs in which to participate. For example, if you're interested in working with animals, then you could spend a few months at a koala sanctuary in Brisbane, Australia. Then you might fly over to Thailand to help with an aid organization. Or perhaps you'd prefer to enroll in a short art and design program in Ghana, or further your art studies in Italy. Many of the gap year websites like www.gapyear.com have links to programs like these. Some also include discussion forums where people post information about these opportunities while others share tips and information from experiences they've already gained from their own gap year travel and work.

Once you decide on the direction you want to take, whether it's explicit courses of study or volunteering, you'll need to investigate the programs you find in your research. First of all, you might need a few extra qualifications. For example, some animal work requires certain types of training, while some is more "grunt work" and the learning is all on the job. You'll also need to check the track record of the organizations themselves that offer these gap work jobs. This is when communication with previous high school graduates who have opted for these programs is invaluable.

You can keep your mind active and not lose your edge, even if you take a gap year. You may choose to study art in Italy, learn Spanish in Venezuela or volunteer in Africa, and you won't have to worry about your brain going dull on you. The point of the gap year is to feed your soul and replenish your spirit. If you can do that while making sure you don't lose your mental alertness, then you can return to university and be fully ready to immerse yourself in your work there.

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