Gap Year News Articles

A Gap Year can be a good career move

2nd Aug 2010

If you are feeling frustrated at work, taking a gap year to travel and consider your options could be a smart move.

Gap Years are no longer the sole preserve of university graduates looking to broaden their horizons before starting a career, or school leavers taking a year out before continuing their studies at university. Every year around 90,000 people take some sort of career break. These individuals are usually in their late twenties or early thirties, although an increasing number are in their forties and fifties.

After being made redundant earlier this year, Kirsty Beavis finally decided to turn her dream of working with dolphins into a reality. She joined an environmental project in Mauritius and spent two months working alongside marine biologists, contributing to the development of conservation legislation, carrying out projects and talking to tourists and locals about how the marine wildlife can best be preserved.

When she returned to England she swapped Buckinghamshire for Cornwall to be nearer the sea, and immediately began training to be a fitness and aerobics instructor.

"The trip changed my attitude to life," adds Beavis. "I knew I was only going to be out there for two months, so really made the most of every single day – and I have really tried to carry on that approach to life since I've come back."