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{ 2005 10 14 }

Taking a break before college

College administrators report that increasing percentage of students are taking a break from school before starting college. The stress and pressure of the push to achieve leaves many youngsters too immature to deal with college at age 17 or 18.

If school is no longer preparing you for college, what exactly is the point?

My kids are on a 12 year school break. I suspect they will be ready for college should they choose to go that route.

Posted by Chris ODonnell on Friday, October 14, 2005, at 8:13 am. Filed under Education. Follow any responses to this post with its comments RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

{ 5 } Comments

  1. Ron | October 14, 2005 at 8:34 pm | Permalink

    I took a few years after HS before going to college because I hated school. I suspect alot of other 17 or 18 yo are in the same spot.

    Did you find college had the same pressures as school?

  2. COD | October 14, 2005 at 8:39 pm | Permalink

    I completely breezed though my pre-college years. My parents were not overly demanding. As long as I kept up a 3.0 GPA I was golden. No pressure to be a tennis star, no pressure to get straight A’s, etc.

    My first 2 years of college were stressful – but that was self-induced stress from a lack of decent study habits. Once I learned to balence my social life and class responsibilites – the last 2 years of college were no problem.

    That will probably be another huge advantage for our kids. It’s very natural for them to go figure stuff out on there own. i was conditioned to just keep going to class in the hopes that I would eventually connect the dots and understand.

  3. Harriette | October 15, 2005 at 5:25 pm | Permalink

    http://www.gapyear.com

  4. COD | October 15, 2005 at 8:02 pm | Permalink

    Cool site – thanks Harriete

  5. Tim Haas | October 16, 2005 at 11:24 pm | Permalink

    Perils of reading too fast — thought that link read “gaypear” …