The thought of coming to graduate school after a gap year was daunting. I hadn’t thought about statistics in forever other than occasionally checking my fantasy football teams. I hadn’t taken an exam, interviewed, or studied for anything. I wasn’t even working in a traditional setting like an office. My days had no proper structure, and I seldom woke up knowing what I would do that day. That was about to change when I embarked on my journey at the IAA.
Although I just made my gap year sound like I rolled out of bed in the morning and stumbled through the day doing whatever, whenever, it was hardly like that. I spent most of my year traveling across the globe, visiting 20+ countries, volunteering, and working odd jobs wherever possible. While there were no tests, studying, or statistically stimulating activities, this experience, not my prior schooling, prepared me best for this program and my future.
In the beginning weeks of the IAA, I was too focused on my rusty technical skills to realize how impactful my gap year truly was. However, after settling into my groove, I started to understand the effects of the past year of traveling. The IAA emphasizes real-world skills (soft skills), which are just as important as the technical skills you learn in this program.
After years of COVID and limited interaction with the outside world, I needed to get out there and explore what I couldn’t during the pandemic. Thus, I set out on a journey with a one-way ticket and only the first month planned out.
For the first month, I traveled through Spain and Morocco, exploring big cities and remote wilderness in each country. During this period, I immersed myself in the culture as much as possible while meeting and having great conversations with people along the way. I found some fantastic hikes, saw some of the most beautiful sunsets I had ever seen, and connected with nature.
Shortly after, I spent an entire month teaching English to Romanians in the remote Carpathian Mountains. This experience tested and grew my patience, teamwork, and communication skills, as managing a class of students is difficult, especially considering the language barrier. I remember this month being challenging and stressful, but I learned so much about managing this stress and showing up every day even when you don’t feel your best.
The following month, I quickly adapted my schedule, finding ways to save money through volunteering/working. This led me to a remote town in southern Italy, Pentadatillo, where I volunteered to help an older lady with her daily life, which included preparing food and serving tourists at her makeshift restaurant. She would wake up early every morning, tend to her goats, do necessary chores, make food for guests, and entertain them. Through assisting her, I got a deep understanding of the amount of grit, determination, and strength it took for her to maintain this life.
Afterward, I traveled to Hungary to volunteer with another family. However, when I got there, the place was overcrowded, and not enough places to sleep. This led me to sleep in a small tent with two other people in the hot Hungary summer. I had to quickly re-evaluate, and the next day, I found another opportunity in Poland, which had me taking 18 hours of overnight busses just to get there.
Once there, I worked on a family’s agrotourism farm, helping them with their small business. I did everything from tending to horses, cutting trees, making food, and setting up and taking down attractions when needed. However, the most impactful part of these few weeks was talking with the family and a family of Ukrainian refugees who lived with them. I listened to their impactful stories about their journey to Poland, which gave me a deeper understanding of a situation I was far removed from.
I then traveled back to Sicily, Italy, where I taught another week of English at a summer camp, further challenging my patience, teamwork, and communication with more language barriers. Afterward, I moved up to the Black Forest in Germany, where I stayed with an older couple on their small farm. I cleared areas to plant trees, helped set up space for solar panels, and tended to plants and animals as needed. This became another opportunity to bond by sharing stories and hearing different perspectives while soaking up the wisdom they offered.
Next on the list was Asia. I traveled to Kyrgyzstan and practiced/taught English with aspiring college students who hoped to go to universities abroad. We discussed college, how to prepare for it, and our cultures while practicing English. Despite our vast cultural differences, I learned that we are incredibly similar, which was eye-opening. We have similar goals and aspirations, laugh at similar jokes, and enjoy the same hobbies. While there, I explored the incredible nature of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, riding horses through treacherous mountains, visiting canyons, and hiking through the incredible terrain.
Following this, I traveled to Thailand and explored Bangkok, eating local foods, visiting temples, and walking around the city. I took an overnight train further south and explored the beautiful islands by hiking, kayaking, paddleboarding, and scuba diving. Immersing in nature and relaxing on the beach was a necessary break after a stressful few months.
I then went from Thailand’s hot climate to Japan’s cold mountains. I took time to explore Tokyo before going to work in a ski lodge and helping prepare for the ski season. I help set up the lodge by cleaning, creating structures to protect plants and trees from snow, and setting up decorations for the Christmas season in the beautiful snowy mountains.
Throughout the jobs/volunteering I did, I was able to take small trips, whether by myself or with the families and friends I met, to places that had always been on my bucket list.
The remaining months of my gap year, I spent traveling the US. I drove across the country, reconnecting with friends and spending time with family while continuing to meet new people and explore new places along the way. I spent a lot of time in Texas and made a new home meeting many amazing people and working on many hobbies and skills I hadn’t had the opportunity to. I practiced video editing, played drums, started learning guitar, played many sports, and attempted to get into better shape.
One of the biggest stressors was my strict budget, as I used only money I had saved from previous internships. This led me to sleep in less-than-ideal situations and crammed with no space on the world’s most budget airlines, busses, and taxis. I learned to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. I learned to be okay with uncertainty. Most of all, I learned how to stretch a dollar.
As school continued through the summer and beginning of fall, I realized how impactful these experiences were. The IAA is an intensive grad school program requiring more of these “soft skills” than any other academic setting I have ever been in.
The patience, communication, and teamwork I developed teaching with language barriers taught me a lot. The team environments at the IAA emphasize the importance of these skills and honestly, during my undergraduate, I seldom had the opportunity to utilize these skills in an academic setting.
Additionally, you constantly meet new students, professionals, and potential employers with different stories and backgrounds. Understanding them and listening generates conversations that can lead to important connections, professional or personal. Traveling and meeting people like I did made this much easier.
Furthermore, during projects or assignments, I have hit many walls and roadblocks at the IAA. While my stakes are much lower, I find myself thinking back to the family from Ukraine, the older Italian lady, or one of the many other countless people who taught me what perseverance and determination truly mean.
Finally, I’ve noticed it is important to understand that sometimes you just have to decide, and roll with it, which can be incredibly hard when there are infinite paths to go down, especially in statistics. While traveling, I made plenty of poor decisions, some even putting me in very risky situations, but finding my way through it all made me a much more confident decision-maker.
This adventure pushed me to grow in ways any academic setting could never. Moreover, it helped me see the bigger picture, allowing me to be much less stressed, more efficient, and more confident than I would have been without traveling.
I recommend that everyone take some time, gap year or not, to push themselves to the limits because that is where you will see the most personal growth. Everyone is different, and thus it may not be traveling that does it for you, but find some thing, some way, to push yourself before this program because it will help you immensely.
Columnist: Casey Stephens