By Liam Horn
Gap Year Student 2026
What If You Just Don’t Know Yet?
I grew up being asked what I wanted to do in the future, and every time I answered with what interested me at that stage of my life. At times, I wanted to build Lego for the rest of my life. When I was 13 or 14, I started taking an interest in photography, but I never followed that interest. Other times I watched a show about police, and then I would be interested in that for a short while. As I grew older, I had less of an idea of what I wanted to do. Eventually I just told myself, “Things will just fall into place”. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I didn’t know how to find something that I could do as a career and not as a hobby.
Giving Myself Time to Explore
Two years ago, I started looking for gap year programs where I could learn things, and maybe I’ll find something to do in the future. When I heard about this Gap Year program, I found out that they have a photography course that can go into underwater photography as well. I thought that this might be it. Something I can do and learn about something that I have been really interested in in the past. And taking a closer step toward a career. Though Scuba Diving was part of the program, I was more interested in the life skills, and especially intrigued by the photography.
Sometimes You Find What You Weren’t Looking For
As I went through the gap year and did some photography and other things in the program, I actually started enjoying the Diving more than I thought I would. I learned new skills to do with diving, and other skills that I use alongside diving. By me being intrigued by photography led me to do scuba diving, which I enjoyed more than I thought I would.
The Skills I Didn’t Know I Needed
There are many skills that I’ve learned in the last couple of months, and most are important in day-to-day life. These skills are things like taking responsibility, accountability, and ownership; communication skills; emotional intelligence and emotional awareness; self-awareness; self-esteem; appearance; and more. These soft skills are very important, and I wish that schools would focus on these as well. These skills can help anyone in the future, no matter what they do for work.
Your Attitude Changes More Than You Think
Something else I’ve learned through this program is that your attitude can change your view. This is something I’ve experienced myself. There are mornings when I wake up, and I don’t want to do anything in the program; I would much rather just stay at home and do nothing productive. Once I changed to a more positive attitude, I enjoyed my time a lot more and was (and still am) more eager to come in every day and learn more skills.
What I Would Tell My Younger Self
If I was given the chance to talk to myself a year ago, I would tell myself that he needs to be more open minded and enjoy every day. I’ll even tell my younger self that he will change for the better, and that he should aknowledge his weaknesses and learn to improve them as soon as possible. There will be some that’s harder than others and he will not want to improve because he won’t want to put in the effort. But something I’ll remind him of is that if he wants to have the future he wants for himself, it will require effort and hard work.
I Still Don’t Have It All Figured Out — And That’s Okay
Within this Gap Year I learned a lot of useful skills and some of them was things I was struggling with personally. This Gap Year showed me that taking one year to learn a lot of different skills and doing different things than what I would normally do, can actually show me things that I didn’t know I would enjoy or be interested in. Do I know what I want to do, not at all, but that’s fine, I still have enough time to figure it out.
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