I feel a little foolish taking a gap year, but then I know how to justify myself to myself. In my A2 year of college I was in the region of 70% sure that I wanted to go to university and excel in my field (English or Drama), about 20% sure I wanted to go to drama school and train as an actor, with 10% not sure if any of it was right at all. I could have applied in my A2 year, my mum says I should've. I can't change the past, however I can now
know that what I want to do is go to university and pursue my loves: English and Drama, together as a joint degree. I was mostly sure when I should've been applying, but that 30% was enough of a risk for 3 years of my life and a debt which in all probability I could never repay.
In a way, this gap year is two-fold useful to me: for one, the way I did things means I had time to not make the wrong decision, and for the other, I wouldn't risk having done the right thing and always having wondered if I shouldn't have done something else. Taking time out to make decisions can be an important decision in itself, and if that means taking a whole year out, then so be it. Then again, a whole year is no trifling matter - in fact, it's a 19th of my entire life so far, and that slice of life being on the 'now' end of what I'm living makes it quite ominous, but I'll be damned if that means I'm going to waste a year. I am now set on my course, and this gap year I'm going to make all about giving myself a greg grounding for my study of English and Drama.
I said in my essay
'Reading and the Riptide' that reading books is like a Fibonacci spiral, each one connecting to many more, and each of those to many more again, exponentially expanding one's consciousness and understanding. I still stand by that assertion and by that logic I thought the best possible place to start my gap year preparation would be the local library. My plan is to get a hugely wide base of understanding to build up from, starting my experience horizontally as it were before building up vertically to more specific knowledge.
