The Clever Way to Spend Your Gap Year

Young adults, parents, and even researchers agree: Taking a gap year between high school and college_{College vs. Bootcamp: Which Learning Model to Choose} is incredibly beneficial, if not necessary for many students. In a recent article touting this early career break, author DJ DiDonna, a lecturer at Harvard Business School and founder of The Sabbatical Project, cites numerous studies that suggest that incoming freshmen who take a gap year report lower levels of stress and burnout, higher academic performance, and more confidence in themselves than those that don’t.

Gap years aren’t for everyone. But for those who feel drawn to this life step, the choices of what to do with those extra 12 months can be overwhelming. Travel? Work a part-time job? Start a business?

None of these are bad options! In fact, whatever you pick will no doubt change your worldview, passions, and skill set for the better.

We’ll toss in one more idea to mull over: signing up for a bootcamp. This will not only supercharge your academic and professional trajectory — it can also easily be paired with other gap year hobbies and goals. 

Let us explain:

The best thing to do during a gap year: what you want or what you need

Gap years are meant to help you discover what you want to do with your life — in your career, yes, but also as an individual with interests, relationships, and values. And they only really work if you come away feeling (mostly — no one’s perfect) self-assured, healthy mentally, and/or inspired spiritually. After all, how else are you to successfully conquer a major period of transition (college and adulthood)?

All this to say, what you do on your gap year is up to you. It’s not for your parents, or teachers, or friends, or anyone else to decide. We can discuss the perks of a bootcamp all day, but even we agree that it’s only the right choice if it truly speaks to who you are, who you want to be, and where you want to spend your time and energy. 

So you just want to roadtrip cross-country, or spend your days in a woodshop, or learn how to make pasta in an Italian kitchen. Great! We’ll be the first to tell you that’s the perfect route for you. (Just keep financial constraints in mind, of course.)

The clever add-on to your gap year: a bootcamp

Maybe you’re still pondering options — in that case, might as well hear us out!

Many bootcamps, including ours, are built with busy people in mind. We know that employees, working moms_{Why Tech is For Moms}, and students alike may want to build certain skills, but worry about the commitment and price of going back to school. Which is why our programs are flexible, part-time, and a true addition to other activities, rather than a replacement.

Let’s say traveling the globe is on your gap year itinerary. Also taking on a job or internship is probably not in the cards because you need to be in-office, or dedicate a specific set of hours to being online. Alternatively, a bootcamp can be done entirely remote with just a laptop, in your comfiest clothes, during peak periods of boredom or learning motivation. Most of our programs require just 20 hours a week_{Yes, Our Bootcamp Is Flexible. Here’s Why That Matters for Students.} to complete classwork and attend lectures — if that’s too much to handle, we offer extensions and breaks.

Our participants, who range in age, profession, and background, manage this all the time with little to no hiccups. For example, Jeremy Rivera_{Balancing College, Work, Family, and a Part-Time Bootcamp to Find Tech Success: Jeremy Rivera’s TripleTen Story} was able to attend and graduate from TripleTen’s software engineering bootcamp while also finishing his college degree, working a full-time job, and tending to family duties. The only casualty? Some nights of Netflix binging.

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Now, he heads up tech efforts at tax planning platform The Walters Institute.

I use what I learned at TripleTen every day. Jeremy Rivera, TripleTen grad

Perhaps another upside to consider is how a bootcamp can serve as a guide in your personal journey alongside exposure to new places and cultures. If your main goal during a gap year is to figure things out for yourself — what you’re passionate about, what you want to do more or less of — maybe your online learning community could help you get where you need to go.

3 reasons why taking a bootcamp in your gap year is clever

Now, let’s dive deeper into the benefits of tacking on a bootcamp to other gap year plans (or making it your only plan).

You’ll actually learn what you want to do

There’s not a ton of time between when you enter college and when you have to choose a career path. Many universities actually require you to pick a lane before your first semester even begins, either by forcing you to finalize your major ASAP or by segmenting students into different “schools” or programs, such as business or engineering.

For some students, this works out OK — they’ve always known what they’ve wanted to do, and jumping right to it just makes sense. But for others, it can be terrifying to agree to something for the rest of your life (or a good portion of it_{Tech Jobs for Older Adults: How to Change Careers at 60}) at the ripe age of 18. 

This is why gap years exist, and why a bootcamp might be the move for this situation: It allows you to “test-drive” a popular profession, exposing you to the realities (good and bad), before you make your decision, and it does so in a low stakes environment (minimum time and money commitment). Bootcamps have little downsides: If you hate it or don’t take away much, you’ll still come away with some marketable skills and something to put on your resume — and considering how little most college students have on their resumes before their first job, that’s another win!

You’ll also learn more about yourself as a student. You can then take that knowledge with you into your college classroom and activities to get the most out of that education. For example, maybe hands-on learning sticks better than visuals or speeches. That might inform the types of classes you sign up for (labs rather than lectures) or how you approach professors with questions.

You’ll gain industry-ready skills

In a traditional classroom setting, you develop so many important skills, be it communication, public speaking, or time management. But many institutions lack the proper technical training needed for certain in-demand fields. Computer science majors at liberal arts_{Can My Liberal Arts Degree Get Me a Job in Tech?} colleges, for example, tend to only focus on theoretical concepts rather than actual coding. Other engineering schools don’t go too deep into practical knowledge needed for the roles their students target post-graduation, such as hedge-fund trading, software development, or IT. The fact is, a degree can get you in the door of a company, but how you succeed long term depends highly on what you pick up on-the-job or through hands-on experience.

Bootcamps can bridge this gap by exposing you to real-world problems and projects that augment your education with examples of crucial skills in action (more on that below). That, paired with externship opportunities, will put you head-and-shoulders above the rest of your graduation class.

You’ll garner tech bona fides in your free time

Your college essays may not serve as prime examples of your skill set — and you’d be hard pressed to find an employer who accepts them as proof of fit — but the portfolio of work you build through a bootcamp certainly will. This portfolio will also be tailored to your ideal job, whereas a lot of the projects you complete in school might be too broad or surface-level.

Additionally, bootcamp bona fides can help you get into college, if you’re still in the application process during your gap year. Not only will it prove your passion for your future major, but it’ll also showcase your dedication, versatility, and work ethic as a student.

See if a bootcamp is right for you

You have enough decisions on your plate — let us make one for you. Our five-minute quiz will instantly answer the question, “Should I sign up for a bootcamp in my gap year?” then provide concrete steps for making it happen around your schedule.