Year abroad brings sweet satisfaction

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.

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.”

Mind the Gap

Year abroad brings sweet satisfaction

November 7, 2014

Courtesy of Jesse Newton

KEEPING BUSY: Jesse Newton ’18 traveled to New Zealand and worked as a beekeeper during his gap year.

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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