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Mind the Gap: There and back again: Aborn ’17 takes international, local gap year
For Mariette Aborn ’17, studying abroad runs in the family. Aborn’s mother, uncle, older sister and younger brother all spent time overseas during high school. Though Aborn was unable to take time off to go away during high school, she knew that studying abroad was an experience she wanted before she started college.
That being the case, Aborn spent the fall semester after her high school graduation in Porrentruy, Switzerland, where she lived with a host family and attended Collège St Charles, a small, private Catholic school with only 18 students in each grade.
“I didn’t hesitate to take another year to figure out where I was going,” she said about choosing her destination.
Going to a new school, Aborn noted that while her new school in Switzerland was very strong in math and science, and had many foreign language programs, it differed from U.S. schools in that there was little emphasis on literary analysis.
“When I was there, [students] wrote their first essay analyzing literature which was a big deal to them, and that to me was very surprising,” said Aborn. “I did it all wrong, I guess, because I [titled the paper] ‘Stairway,’ and I had this metaphor that went all throughout it and they laughed at me and said that was completely wrong—that’s not how you’re supposed to do it.”Aborn also said schools in Switzerland differed from schools in the U.S. because all of the students she attended school with were already on a direct track college.
“In Switzerland they sort of weed out before you get to high school who’s actually going to college, so that decision is already made very early on. All of the students in the high school that I was at were destined for college,” she said. “In the U.S. it’s different because you’re still all together. They have different schools: trade schools, vocational schools, and it’s figured out by grade six whether or not you’re on that track.”
Thus, unlike her peers in Switzerland, for Aborn, going to school in another country during her gap year was an opportunity to let go of some of her earlier focus on academics and spend time getting to know her peers and speaking to them in French.
“When I was in Switzerland, I saw it as an opportunity to not be the goody two-shoes I was in high school,” she said. “So I wasn’t a model student.”
Along the way, Aborn also experienced some cultural misunderstandings—often in the classroom.
“I got in trouble with the teachers because I always had a water bottle in class and they always were telling me that ‘this was not a room of picnic,’” she said.
After her fall semester, Aborn returned home to Manchester, Vt. to finish out her gap year, where she worked in a shoe store to earn money for college and had a social media internship at a nonprofit. Aborn said it was strange being back at home after graduating from high school and going abroad.
“Everyone in my town thought I had dropped out of college,” she said. “I definitely was interacted with in a different way because I was this person who had graduated high school and was back in town. I very much suffered some odd questions and dirty looks.”
Though she was nervous about returning to rigorous academics after her year was over, Aborn said she was glad she decided to take the year off.
“I was very much nervous about writing papers again because I hadn’t written a real paper for a long time,” she said. “I was very grateful for my first-year seminar opportunity to write again and really focus on those skills.”
She said the biggest difference she noticed upon arriving at Bowdoin after a gap year was that she had already adjusted to life after high school. She had been away from her high school friends for a year, and grown apart from them more compared to some of her friends who were still more connected.
“A year out, you talk to the people you want to talk to. But when you go home it’s like you never left,” said Aborn. “I was already at that point, [but] all of my friends here were still very much connected to their high school friends and talking to them throughout their first couple months of college.”
Now a sophomore, Alborn is settled into Bowdoin but has plans to go abroad again next year, this time to France. She will continue her language studies and hopefully become fluent in French.
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Mind the Gap: A Taiwanese gap year for Jaramillo ’17
After graduating from high school, Eduardo Jaramillo ’17 chose to spend a year in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. While there he studied at a traditional Taiwanese high school as a foreign exchange student through Rotary International Youth Exchange.
Sitting in homeroom with his new Taiwanese peers, Jaramillo struggled to participate in class with his limited grasp of Mandarin. A reprieve from this language barrier came through extracurricular classes in traditional Chinese arts that the school organized for Jaramillo and two other foreign students from France and Brazil. In these classes, Jaramillo encountered traditional Chinese art and calligraphy, learned to play the Chinese harp and even practiced kung fu and tai chi.
“Those were really nice breaks throughout the day from sitting in the class with the Taiwanese kids and just hearing Chinese and not being able to understand it,” said Jaramillo.
After school, Jaramillo would sample the local cuisine and culture with his host mother.
“We would visit temples and other interesting parts of the city, and she would try to teach me Chinese,” he said.
Jaramillo progressively began spending more time with the two other foreign students from school.
“Those were my two best friends throughout the year and they’re still some of my best friends,” he said.
When the three got off from school they would go the beach, bowl and sightsee.
“We learned that we could rent these little mopeds, which was against the rules of our program, but we did it anyway,” said Jaramillo.Transgressing at low to moderate speeds, Jaramillo and his friends would take their mopeds on the ferry to an island off the coast, which became one of their favorite hangouts.
“It was sort of its own little community and had its own beach and a street that was famous for its seafood,” said Jaramillo.
Another favorite jaunt was a trip to one of the many night markets in the city. A Taiwanese staple, these markets were full of clothing vendors, carnival-like games and booths selling all foods imaginable.
“There’s one night market that’s really touristy. They have this shop there that sells snake stew, so that was probably the weirdest thing that I ate,” said Jaramillo. “The snake meat was kind of like a tough fish meat. It didn’t taste bad though. It wasn’t the worst thing that I ate.”
Jaramillo said he mostly just ate fried shrimp in the night markets, but tried tripe soup once, quickly discovering that he did not like it.
Jaramillo also developed a taste for oyster omelets, a popular Taiwanese snack.The experience Jaramillo considers most memorable, however, took place far from the bustle of the night markets.
“Towards the end of the year, my host grandmother, whom I never actually met, died and I was able to go to a very traditional Taiwanese funeral in the countryside. It was a different world. It was really wild, especially after spending most of the time in the city,” he said.
Jaramillo looks forward to experiencing rural life again next fall when he will study abroad in the city of Kunming, China.
“I chose Kunming in part because it’s a less modern, less western-oriented city compared to Shanghai or Hong Kong,” he said. “I want to see how the rural part of China lives.”
This time, language should not be as much of a barrier, as Jaramillo has been pursuing a minor in Chinese. However, he does not believe his language education at Bowdoin lives up to his experience abroad.
“I think that immersion experience is so much more valuable than this classroom experience I’ve been getting at Bowdoin,” he said. “Nothing against the Chinese department, but it’s really hard to improve a language when you can’t speak it organically.”
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Mind the Gap: Sullivan ’16 takes gap year to travel America
What do road trips, Frontier and the Appalachian Trial have in common? Answer: junior Paul Sullivan’s gap year.
“I decided I wanted to take a gap year to hike the Appalachian Trial my freshman year of high school, initially because one of my sister’s friends was doing it, and he had a blast, so it seemed like a lot of fun,” said Sullivan, a Brunswick native. “As I progressed through high school, I was working hard, and I just wanted an experience that was different than schoolwork and academics.”
Sullivan would not reach the Appalachian Trial until the very end of his gap year. Instead, after his high school graduation, he began the first leg of his adventure with a two-month road trip with a friend.
“We did a huge loop—going out West we stayed North, so we went to Chicago and the Midwest, and we went through Yellowstone and Grand Teton, to Seattle, to Olympic National Park and then went down the California coast—Redwood, Yemini, San Francisco, L.A.—and then went diagonally back to Maine, covering the Southwest,” said Sullivan.
After his trip, Sullivan started working at Frontier.
“Working was probably the toughest part because almost all of my friends had gone away to college and town was empty,” said Sullivan. “It was a lot of hanging out with my parents and repeating the same thing day in and day out.”
When March rolled around he was ready to begin the last leg: hiking the Appalachian Trail. He started the trip in Georgia and ended in his own backyard in Maine, a week before his pre-orientation trip.
“It was weird—on the one hand it felt great because I just completed the trail, but part of me wanted to keep going,” Sullivan said. “I was sad that all the people I had met along the way were all dispersing.”
Finishing his gap year experience, he immediately went on his on his pre-orientation trip—biking to Popham Beach. Back on campus, he faced some difficulty transitioning to college life.
“As I look back on it, it was a very weird experience, but I think everyone is going through a weird experience [during] freshman fall—trying to get used to this new place, new home and new group of friends. I think I was pretty unhappy sitting inside, in a classroom because I had gotten used to being outside for most of the day,” said Sullivan. “I wasn’t super psyched with the structure of school and I also didn’t know exactly what I wanted to study—so I enjoyed my classes but I wasn’t passionate about anything in particular.”
That didn’t stop him from engaging in the Bowdoin community. That fall, Sullivan became involved with the Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC) and went through leadership training. He is still an active member of the BOC. In the winter, he takes advantage of the snow, trying to make it up to Sugarloaf once a week to ski.
“Getting outside is a big part of my life and a big part of how I stay balanced and calm in the whirlwind Bowdoin can be,” said Sullivan.Sullivan would recommend the gap year experience to anyone interested.
“I think, overall, one of the most fun parts of the gap year was having the opportunity to pursue my interests and just relax and take a deep breath because that doesn’t happen in school,” said Sullivan. “Coming back to Bowdoin, things weren’t overwhelming to me because I had done something outside of school. It lends a nice perspective.
Editor's note: The headline originally stated the Sullivan is a member of the class of 2017. He is a member of the class of 2016.
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Mind the Gap: Around the world and back again: Heath ’18 takes global gap year
After high school, Christian Heath ’18 wanted to explore his newfound freedom—the freedom of living, the freedom to do what he wanted when he wanted, and most importantly, the freedom to travel the world.
“It was more after senior year, I had graduated and it was summer—I was just enjoying the freedom of having school done and just didn’t really want to go to school yet. So I drew up a plan—and I was like ‘Can this work?’” said Heath.
It did. Heath went to Central America for three and a half months, worked the winter season to make money, and then headed to Europe for three and half months. His first stop was Costa Rica, where he intended to WWOOF. WWOOF—which stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms—is an organization where farm labor is exchanged for food and a place to live.
“I was going to do that in Central America, but the first farmer I went to—it was an awful experience. She wasn’t feeding us enough food so we were really hungry all the time. After three weeks, I was done,” said Heath.
Fortunately, Heath did not leave empty handed from the farm. He made a German friend, who went on to become his Central American travel partner. After leaving the farm, they moved to Jaco, Costa Rica to work in a hotel.
“They let us stay in a room for free. They had all these doors that they needed sanded, so for like four weeks we just sanded doors, which was really easy work. It was like a twenty-hour work week, so we got to hang out for the rest of the time, it was awesome,” said Heath.
After about a month at the hotel, Heath travelled around Panama for a couple of weeks, before finally finishing his Central America trip with a month in Nicaragua.
Heath then worked for two months back home in the United States before starting his tour around Europe.
“In Europe, I had a Eurail Pass—you pay money up front for a rail pass and it works for all of Europe. It was a ticket to go free to anywhere I wanted, and just being able to do that was sick,” said Heath.
After his journey around the world was completed, Heath finally found himself at Bowdoin’s campus. All in all he had visited sixteen countries: Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Spain, Morocco, France, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Austria and Italy.
“At first it was kind of tough—in Europe I was all alone for the majority of it—which was cool, but you get lonely. So getting back was a bit tough, going from being alone to being with a roommate and getting more social again, but on the whole it wasn’t too bad,” said Heath.
Heath’s experience was one he could learn from, grow from, and one he will always remember.“When you have a memory that’s shared, I feel like it has a longer life than when it’s just you. You never really have anyone to talk with about it,” said Heath. “[Memories] probably have a bit more value when they’re shared, so if I were to do something like this again, I’d totally want to start it with someone or know I was going to meet up with someone to travel with.”
When asked if he would recommend a gap year to those who were considering the idea, he replied: “There were some negatives—I was lonely at times—but as a whole experience I would one hundred percent recommend it.
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Mind the Gap: DiPrinzio ’18 takes gourmet gap year
When most people think of enjoyable gap years, they likely do not picture working 12 hour shifts, six days a week. That is exactly what first year Harry DiPrinzio envisioned, however.
In the year before coming to Bowdoin, DiPrinzio spent his time working in restaurants in New York City and Paris. In September, he began by working at New York’s Michelin star-winning Gramercy Tavern.
Having long been a fan of cooking and gastronomy, DiPrinzio had always planned to work in a restaurant before college.
“I worked in restaurants in the two summers during high school and I think at some point during junior year I realized that I could [take a gap year] and basically just started thinking about it,” he said.
At Gramercy he was an extern—a position often filled by culinary school students fulfilling their on-site hours.
“I put away produce,” said DiPrinzio. “They get thousands of pounds of produce a day and it all has to be put away and sorted, so I started doing that.”
As time went on, DiPrinzio worked his way up Gramercy Tavern’s ladder. He started helping out at lunch service by performing tasks such as shucking oysters and slicing bread. Soon after, DiPrinzio was able to secure a spot on the cold appetizer station during weekend shifts.
“The days were action packed,” said DiPrinzio. “I was always running around and incredibly tired and adrenaline filled.”
During his time at Gramercy, DiPrinzio lived at his home. However, he knew he wanted to gain a more international experience during his year. That January, he accepted an opportunity to work at a Parisian restaurant.
“There was a chef in Paris who had worked at Gramercy and the chef at Gramercy sent me to the Paris guy and said, ‘He wants to go to Paris,’” he said.
DiPrinzio was able to spend his whole time in France—about two and a half months—at the same restaurant after taking the spot of a recently hired employee who left.
During his time in Paris DiPrinzio was able to explore, but it was often difficult. He worked 16 hour days five days a week while also trying to figure out his surroundings.
“Just being alone in Paris was definitely a different scenario,” said DiPrinzio.
Perhaps one of his biggest struggles was finding a place to live. After staying with a friend for a few days, he began to search for a place to live more independently. Eventually, he ended up renting a room in a couple’s home.
“I messaged all these people and some of them got back to me. I went and visited one of them and it was like the biggest shithole ever,” he said. “[But] this one seemed nice. It was in a really nice neighbourhood. They were friendly, but the kind of dynamic was weird. The reason I was living in their lives was because they needed more money. They kind of resented me.”
After returning from Paris, DiPrinzio was ready for what lay ahead. Some students may find adjusting back to an academic life difficult after a gap year. DiPrinzio, however, said he has not struggled very much in his first year at Bowdoin.
“I wasn’t around people last year, so it’s nice to be with people my age again and it’s been nice to go back to school and take classes.”
DiPrinzio’s year between high school and college was a preview of life in the real world. While he encountered challenges—from being by far the youngest employee at Gramercy Tavern to navigating the Parisian apartment market—he says it was a valuable experience.
“It was great because I felt like I was living real life and I basically had a job,” he said.
Editor’s note: Harry DiPrinzio is a member of the Orient staff
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Mind the Gap: Meyers ’17 reflects on travels, service
Sophie Meyers ’17 has had plenty of time to reflect on how her decision to take a gap year affected her Bowdoin experience.
When Meyers graduated from high school, she said she felt burnt out academically. In order to take a break from the books and try a different kind of learning, she left home to explore other options in Pittsburgh, Pa., Lexington, Mass., Washington, D.C., and even farther away in Costa Rica.
“I’m very into the idea of learning by doing,” she said. “There’s a lot you can learn from the classroom, but there’s so much to learn about the world and yourself by putting yourself in situations where you’re not necessarily comfortable.”
Meyers’ first stop was in Pittsburgh where she joined the Obama campaign. There she worked as an organizing fellow, canvassing, phone banking, and training new volunteers. She even had the opportunity to work at events which featured Bill Clinton and Bruce Springsteen. Next, Meyers moved back to her hometown, Lexington, Mass., where she volunteered in Boston at an independent school for students from low-income families. There she helped students prepare to apply to private high schools.“I was working with eighth graders on applications and trying to get them to dig deeper with essay questions,” she said.
In the spring, Meyers traveled to Costa Rica, where she lived in a rural village with a host family—a highlight of her gap year. She spent most of her time teaching English and math at an elementary school, but outside of work, she learned how to make empanadas with her host family and immersed herself in its culture. “That was an unbelievable experience,” Meyers said. “I love the country and I want to go back and visit my host family.”
With her gap year coming to a close, Meyers continued to try new things and moved to Washington, D.C., for ten weeks as an intern for the global trade watch team at Public Citizen, a non-profit organization and think tank that advocates for consumer rights.
For Meyers, every experience was an opportunity to think about different options and possible careers.
Meyers felt like she came to some conclusions about her future that she would not have reached if she had gone straight to school. “It’s nice to have those experiences when I’m thinking about going forward,” she said. “At the end of the Obama campaign, you could have asked me, ‘Do you want to be in politics?’ And I would have said, ‘Yes. Totally.’ But by the time I got back from Costa Rica I had reflected a lot more on that experience, and I think that might not be where I’m headed.”
Brunswick is Meyers’ most recent stop. Many students who take gap years worry about the transition to college life and the possibility of feeling disconnected from their peer but Meyers feels that her transition was fairly smooth.
“I would not have been as comfortable here my freshman year if I hadn’t gone and done my gap year,” she said. “I think I needed that time to regroup, reflect, and think about what I wanted to be like moving forward.”
Meyers’ transition was also aided by the fact that she kept in touch with some friends from high school who also took gap years.
“Some of them had easy transitions to college, some of them had harder transitions to college. But that was the same with my friends who didn’t take gap years,” she said. “So I think that sort of just depends on the person.”
This year, Meyers plans to declare a major in math and a minor in education. She discovered her love of teaching in Costa Rica and Boston, and it was only when she was reunited with math at Bowdoin she reached her decision to major.Although Meyers has decided what to study, her gap year experiences have shown her that our futures rarely turn out exactly as we plan.
“What you’re doing right now doesn’t necessarily dictate what you’re doing five years from now as much as we’re conditioned to think,” said Meyers.
Next for Meyers, she may study abroad in Edinburgh and see what else she can learn there.
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Mind the Gap: Yoo ’18 finds fulfillment through service
Jae-Yeon Yoo ’18 understands better than most what it means to care for someone. During her gap year she worked in a residential community for people with special needs located in Gorey, Ireland—about two hours south of Dublin.
Yoo worked with an international organization named Camphill Communities to assist 25 members of the residential community, which is divided into small houses. She lived in a house with a host mother and four people with special needs.
Each day, Yoo would wake up and either milk the community’s farm animals, or shower one of the members. Her house family would then cook, eat and clean up breakfast together. After breakfast, everyone would go off to workshops—including pottery, weaving and other activities designed to have the community create something together.
In the morning, Yoo would work in the weavery, and in the afternoon, she would clean with the help of some special needs members of the community.
“Because it’s an entirely self-functioning community, you don’t have people from the outside, like our housekeepers, that come in and do it,” said Yoo. “I got to be really good friends with our vacuum and toilet cleaner.”
Yoo took valuable lessons away from her gap year, but the transition to Bowdoin, and back to living only for herself, has presented challenges.
“I think the main thing [the gap year] helped me to realize is how valuable it is to care for another person and to be fully responsible for someone else,” she said. “I had four people who were getting me up in the morning, and now I only have to be responsible for myself. That’s really relieving in the beginning but at the same time you feel a little bit empty. I’m still dealing with that.”
Yoo’s experience was also meaningful as it gave her a chance to get to know socially marginalized people.
“I think people should realize that special needs people really aren’t very different from us,” she said. “People, when they hear about my gap year, always say, ‘oh my god, you’re such a good person, that’s amazing,’ but I think I gained more from the experience than what I was able to give them. I discovered a lot about myself.”
Yoo found through working with the other residents of the community that the similarities between everyone living there outweighed the differences. She said that recontextualizing what seems like odd behavior in terms of ones own life can help that understanding.
Yoo pointed out that we all desire a certain order in our lives, and while the reaction of a severely autistic person to a change in routine might be different from others, the root cause, a need for stability, is shared.
“If you think about it in those terms it’s really important that they’re not that different,” she said. “I think a lot of people forget that when they hear about my experience. I am far from being an angel.”
Yoo said she has enjoyed returning to her studies after taking a year off from academics. However, she did learn to drink beer with the correct Irish technique.
“I didn’t do any studying unless you count learning how to drink Guinness,” she said. “That was a serious lesson.”
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Mind the Gap: Year abroad brings sweet satisfaction
During his gap year, Jesse Newton ’18 learned to work with his hands.“I wanted some time off from school, I wanted some time to reflect,” he said.Newton skipped the New England winter, flying to the southern hemisphere in February. He spent three months in New Zealand working on several different family farms across the south island.
“I was traveling alone. I didn’t really have a strict itinerary of what I was doing, but it was a good feeling,” Newton said.
He enjoyed the freedom and independence of his experience, learning about sheep farming and beekeeping. For Newton, his time spent with a family of beekeepers was most memorable. For three weeks, he and the family roamed through the New Zealand bush, collecting 100-pound boxes of honey.
“It’s the most beautiful countryside I’ve ever seen, and I come from Vermont,” he said.Newton said the labor was hard and repetitive, especially in the 100-degree weather with the constant threat of bee stings. He also had to wear protective gear resembling a hazmat suit.
“My suit was very, very old and it actually ripped a few times and suddenly quite a few bees were stinging me,” he said.
Even with the intense heat, the beekeepers rehydrated with hot afternoon tea. “I could not understand the rationale, but apparently it hydrates you better than a cooler substance,” Newton said.
Although the work was hard, the rewards were very sweet. Newton recounted an afternoon spent in the bee house putting frames of honey into the extractor machine. He said the air was filled with the warm and intoxicating scent of honey.
“I don’t have a wicked sweet tooth, but it’s fantastic. It’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted,” Newton said.
The particular kind of honey he helped to produce is called Manuka honey. Produced exclusively in Australia and New Zealand, it is valued for its antibacterial properties. Because of the benefits, Newton said he could guiltlessly dip his fingers in the vats of honey.
“I hate to use this expression, but I have never been that high on sugar,” Newton said.Once he returned home to Vermont, Newton worked full-time as a carpenter with his father. They built an entire barn from start to finish while also repairing and building cabinets and tables.
Newton said of his dad, “He likes to restore historic buildings from the 18th and 19th century using techniques that these people would have used and the materials that would have been available to them.”
Since coming to Bowdoin, Newton has worked to get his academic muscles back in shape. After taking two years off from math, multivariable calculus has been a particular struggle.
Finding his place in Bowdoin’s social scene has also been somewhat difficult, as his gap year has caused him to feel somewhat disconnected from his peers. However, Newton has found a home on Bowdoin’s crew team.
“It was probably one of the better decisions I’ve made since being here,” he said.Although he barely has time to sleep with his busy schedule, Newton has found sweet satisfaction back at Bowdoin.
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Mind the Gap: Acting out: first year spends gap year abroad in London
Before she came to Bowdoin, Sarah Guilbault ’18 took a gap semester to study abroad at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and to work in Los Angeles to decide if she wanted to pursue a career in acting.
“I don’t think I’ve really made that decision yet,” she said.
Having lived in London for a year and a half when she was in elementary school, Guilbault’s transition was relatively comfortably.
“It was actually kind of an easier step than going to college because it was kind of like going back home,” she said.
LAMDA, however, might not be everyone’s cup of tea. For 12 hours a day, Guilbault and her peers practiced different acting techniques and dances, sometimes pretending to be animals for an entire day, all in preparation for performing Shakespearean plays every three weeks.
After getting off at her Tube stop every night after 9 p.m., Guilbault would quickly make herself dinner and then memorize all of her lines.
“All you want to do is sleep, and eating is not even really an option,” she said.Her schedule was intense, and Guilbault’s peers would not tolerate horsing around.
Guilbault recalled LAMDA’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” during which the director asked a friend of hers to change his appearance in order to help the cast express fear in seeing his character transformed into a donkey.
Guilbault’s friend entered the stage naked in order to shock the cast—but he didn’t stop there.“Not only is he naked, he has a plastic bag on his head, [is] playing a lute and he has slices of cured meat on his junk, and he starts throwing the cured meat at people, singing to them. It was the most terrifying experience of my entire life,” Guilbault said.
When she could no longer bear all the hamming, Guilbault would explore London, sampling Indian food and what she calls “the best strudel outside of Austria” at a local market.
Guilbault said she loved London’s industrialized glory and close proximity to nature.
“My favorite place in London is called Hampstead Heath” she said. “It’s so beautiful—it’s like you step out of the city and into a forest.”
Guilbault said she has enjoyed the nature surrounding Bowdoin and the friendly people she meets in town. However, she also said the transition to academic life has been difficult.
While she gets back into the groove of essay writing, Guilbault has found a theater crowd at Bowdoin. She is participating in Masque and Gown’s production of “Almost, Maine,” and has been taking Comedy in Performance, taught by Professor of Theater Davis Robinson.
“I get my goofy side out,” said Guilbault of her experience in theater class, “It’s made the transition from pretending to be a tree all day, every day to writing essays a lot easier.”Grades are not Guilbault’s central focus at Bowdoin.
“If I’m going to be an actor, grades don’t matter for anything, but life experience matters for so much and being a better human being and a more intelligent, empathetic person matters a lot. That’s what I’m trying to focus on,” she said. “I’m here to learn as much as I can.”
Although she has made lots of friends at Bowdoin, Guilbault does miss her British friends and intends to visit London over Winter Break. She also said she has dreams of moving to London after she graduates.
“London is the place I always want to be, so I try to go back as much as possible,” she said.
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Mind the Gap: Fiona Iyer finds freedom and family during gap year travels
After participating in a three-week entrepreneurship program, Fiona Iyer ’18 knew she wanted to take a year off before coming to Bowdoin. So, supplied with money from babysitting, she packed her bags and embarked on an adventure to South Africa, Argentina, Mauritius, and Italy.
Iyer started off by spending four months at the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa studying entrepreneurial leadership. She was also the marketing director and business strategist of a media-house business run out of the academy.
There she encountered Veda, her entrepreneurial leadership teacher, who became a great source of inspiration for her.
“He was just brilliant,” said Iyer. “He had such a sense of clarity in that he knew what he was passionate about, he knew what he wanted, he knew where he was going. Eventually I want to get to that stage.”
Though she greatly values her time in South Africa, Iyer does not miss the dangers of living there. South Africa has a murder rate of 31.1 per 100,000 people, which is 4.5 times higher than the global average. The academy where she studied was surrounded by barbed wire and electric fences in order to prevent intruders from stepping on campus.
In addition, Iyer found that the legacy of apartheid still resonates in the country.“We think the inequality between blacks and whites here [in America] is an issue—it’s so exacerbated in South Africa,” she said.
Iyer waitressed at a French café in Johannesburg where she was usually tipped eight or nine times more than the black waitresses.
“I had to stop working there because I didn’t need the money and they did,” said Iyer. “It was just very tense.”
The next leg of Iyer’s journey took her to Buenos Aires, which she says is the part of her gap year she enjoyed most. She initially didn’t have a place to stay and spent her nights sleeping on people’s couches, but ultimately found an apartment and a roommate who became one of her best friends
“I was convinced I was going to stay there,” said Iyer, who was enthralled by the culture, art, and music of the city. She quickly found a job as a graphic designer for the New York-based company Juicy Canvas.
After Argentina, she ended up in Italy.
Iyer was staying on the Amalfi Coast when she took a transcendent bite of crusty bruschetta with spicy extra virgin olive oil and fresh tomatoes. After asking to watch the chef, Patricia, cooking, Patricia proposed that Iyer work in the kitchen (with no working papers) for food and accommodation. In exchange, Iyer would give her English lessons.
“I learned how to cook. That was the most amazing part. The workday was thirteen hours. It was a lot of time,” said Iyer. “It was almost torturous because the Mediterranean Sea was right outside the window so when I was chopping and slicing and being a little sous-chef, I could just see the sea calling to me.”
Iyer found a “warm Italian mama” in Patricia, who didn’t speak any English.
“She always wanted a daughter,” said Iyer. “And she was angling to set me up with one of the other chefs who was her son.”
Iyer said her time in these three countries taught her a lot about herself and the world. But her deepest experience took place on the island of Mauritius, a place where she only stayed for a week—attending a friend’s wedding.
“[Their] family was so big and loud and close,” she said, “That’s when I realized how important family was. And so when I think of my gap year, that was really the most striking moment.”Iyer had some of the most amazing experiences of her life during her gap year and said she always felt trapped by the thought of having to go back to college. She is having a hard time dealing with the new environment finding that the most difficult part of the transition to Bowdoin is missing the sense of anonymity that she had in the city.
Though it’s tough right now, she is giving Bowdoin a fighting chance.
“Everything is temporary and we have so much choice. We can really do whatever we want,” said Iyer. “It’s your life, you’re living it for yourself. It’s very liberating. You realize that you are never stuck in a place. You can pack your suitcase and go. And I think the thought that I am liberated is making the transition easier.”
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Mind the Gap: First-years in fashion, farming and France
Not all students come to Bowdoin immediately after being admitted. Some take time between high school and college—often referred to as a gap year—to advance their education or gain experiences outside of traditional schooling. This is the first in a series of columns that will profile these students and their experiences between high school and arriving at Bowdoin.
Half French and half Chinese-American, Alessandra Laurent moved to Taiwan after living in Los Angeles during middle school. Having lived and studied in both the United States and Taiwan, Laurent decided to spend her gap year experiencing life in France and connecting to that part of her family’s heritage.
“The idea was to live in that context for a year and understand that part of my identity,” Laurent said.
Laurent chose to study in a pre-college prep program with other secondary school graduates studying to pass exams allowing them entrance into France’s top universities. While she was fluent in French prior to studying in Paris, Laurent found the tasks of writing analytical papers and reading literature in French difficult.
“The whole educational philosophy was really different and foreign to me” said Laurent. “In writing essays, the whole format of the way you construct an argument is different—the way they think about arguing anything is different.”
After assimilating to the French educational system, Laurent has found the transition back to American academics challenging.
“I just had to write my first paper [at Bowdoin] recently and I was like, ‘wait, how do I go about this?’” said Laurent. “I’ve gotten used to defining every single term and analyzing every single notion and organizing it more in the French way.”
Elena Mersereau ’18 also took a gap year, but unlike Laurent, she was not entirely sure of where she would go or what she would do. Originally from Brunswick, Maine, Mersereau decided she needed to see more of the world before starting college.
“I probably wouldn’t have ended up at Bowdoin if I hadn’t taken a gap year. I think it was really necessary for me to get out of Brunswick before I came back for four years,” she said.Mersereau began her gap year in New York City, working as a fashion design intern in the Garment District and later on the Upper East Side.
“I’ve always been interested in art and fashion and that whole world,” said Mersereau, “It sounds very glamorous to be a fashion design intern.”
After a few months, however, Mersereau realized her work in the industry wasn’t as fulfilling as she had hoped.
“At the end of the day, I realized I didn’t feel very good about what I was doing,” she said. “I need to [have] a career that I feel good about and that I can see is reaching people in positive ways.”
So Mersereau changed her course. Leaving the bright lights of the New York fashion world, she spent four months traveling through New Zealand working as an organic farmer.
Mersereau first learned about World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) at the Bowdoin 2017 Admitted Students Weekend. She met a current student who told her about WWOOF. Although she can’t remember his name, she does remember that he wore Vibram FiveFingers Shoes.
Mersereau has never spoken to this student since, but she would like him to know that he changed her life.
After backpacking through New Zealand working on dairy farms and picking hazelnuts, Mersereau has become interested in organic living. She hopes to continue this pursuit in the Bowdoin Organic Garden.
While Mersereau was nervous starting her first year at Bowdoin—worried she wouldn't remember how to do school work—she thinks that her experiences have aided her transition into college life.
“I feel like I have things to offer to people and I have a story to tell, more so than I would have if I had come right out of high school,” she said.
Laurent also believes her gap year helped to prepare her for living at Bowdoin, a small residential community.
“It gave me a year to learn how to be independent before I came to college,” she said.However, Laurent says that her gap year experience has given her a different perspective from those of her peers in the Class of 2018.
Mersereau has noticed that her experience during her gap year has set her apart from her fellow classmates.
“It’s been harder to find people who I connect with because people straight out of high school have a different perspective and a different expectation for college than I do,” she said.Overall though, both students were happy with their experiences, and glad that they made the decision to take a gap year.
“I feel a lot more confident now,” said Mersereau, “More ready for the college experience.”