hello and welcome back to my one and only series on this YouTube channel my
gap year series also known as the series that I started to make sure that I
actually planned and went ahead and did this gap year instead of just talking
about it
honestly though I scheduled this video a couple of months in advance and seeing
that on my content calendar got me moving on some things that I had been
procrastinating on so this has actually been a very effective way to ensure that
my gap year actually happened so I thought I'd start this video out by
talking about how I feel about the fact that my gap year is starting in about
seven months so as I mentioned in the first video of this series I'm not doing
college applications this year I'm holding off on them until next year
because I'm hoping that some of the experiences that I'll have on this gap
year will influence the decision that I want to make regarding college
especially because I'm highly considering studying in another country
and so I kind of want to actually get a feel for the country before I decide to
spend four years there so that was a big stress off my shoulders for senior year
not having to worry about college applications but what I wasn't expecting
was that not participating in this process that everyone else around me was
taking part in would feel kind of lonely like did I want to feel worried and
stressed like I saw the people around me were feeling No but not experiencing
that at the same time as everyone else kind of made me feel like it was falling
behind in life but I guess that feeling is normal and so I just had to remind
myself that I need to just stay focused on my own path and just because I'm not
doing what most other people are doing doesn't mean that I'm making the wrong
decision I'm just doing what I think is right for me while we're on the topic of
feelings another thing that I experienced was just this feeling of not
knowing where to start honestly the whole idea of the future is
very overwhelming when you're a senior because I feel like I've been learning
quite a bit about how to be an adult but just the idea of putting all of that
together and actually going out and living on my own is kind of terrifying
and in that same way the idea of spending a year doing this and trying to
prepare for a year of doing this is also pretty overwhelming but again I'm pretty
sure that's a normal way to feel when you're about to go in a gap year and for
that what I've been telling myself is that I just need to take it one step
at a time and that if I do that somehow this will all come together okay so I
haven't just been thinking and worrying about this I've actually been doing some
things in my last video I mentioned how much I love notebooks and especially
free notebooks and this notebook was actually also free I'm very proud of
myself I won this in a giveaway on Instagram and it's such a pretty
notebook I'm very excited about it I wasn't sure what to do with it at first
this is a perfect place to plug my blog post I did a blog post on things that
you can do with empty notebooks if you're interested so I decided to
dedicate this notebook to being my gap year planning notebook the notebook that
I was using in my previous video I was using that to take notes on this online
course that I was doing on how to plan a gap year so I filled that up and now I
needed a new notebook and so this is what I'll be using. The first thing that
I did in this notebook was I made a list of appointments that I need to schedule
A lot of these, it is much too far in advance to actually schedule yet but I
thought it would be really helpful to make a checklist of what appointments I
need to schedule and also the phone numbers that I need to call to do that
so on here I have an appointment with a travel medicine clinic where you
basically talk to the doctor about what places you're gonna visit and kind of go
over the vaccines you might need what medications you might need to bring with
you just in case things like that I have just like the basic dental checkup
vision checkup. Some of these are not really appointments but they're like
things I need to get done so setting up a travel credit card. Another thing that
I need to do is sign up for a self-defense class
my parents are worried about me traveling on my own and we're still
trying to figure out how we can kind of compromise and reach a point that we're
both happy with and I think a self-defense class will help with that
that's not just something that they wanted me to do I also really wanted to
take it because I think it's just helpful for life. So I found a class and
I found a friend to do it with I just have to make sure that I'm available for
those dates and then I'll be able to sign up for it and then the last
appointment that I wrote down was a meeting with a counselor at my school so
he's not my counselor but my counselor recommended that I talked to him because
he apparently went on a big like round-the-world trip and so I was hoping
he would have some advice for me. I don't really know a lot of people who have
actually done this so I figured it would be nice to have someone to ask questions
and get advice from. Another thing I did and that I briefly mentioned in some
video, I don't really remember which one, honestly is what you see behind me so I
created this because I'm a very very visual person
basically I wanted to wait to kind of visually and physically plan out my gap
here I wanted to be able to write things down and move them around and just get
like a big picture view of how my year would look so I decided to use this big
empty wall that I have in my room. I made little labels for each of the months of
my gap year and then I'm basically just using post-its to write information
underneath them so right now it's really really loose and nothing is set in stone
but I just wanted to have some place to start because that really helps with the
feeling of being overwhelmed when you have some sort of idea of where you'll
be and when then it just makes all of the rest of the steps much easier of
course I also wanted it to look pretty so I put some pretty traveling pictures
around it and also some inspiring quotes so it's kind of half calendar half
inspiration board just like motivating me to follow through with this. And
then the last thing that I wanted to mention in this video was that I just
joined a bunch of travel Facebook groups so some of them are just like generic travel
groups some of them are for specific regions of the world
some of them are for backpackers so I joined a lot of different groups right
now it's basically just serving the purpose of filling my Facebook feed with
a little bit of travel inspiration but I think as I get deeper into the more
detailed planning process then I'll actually be able to find some advice for
the specific regions that I'm gonna be visiting and just be able to learn from
people who have actually visited those same regions and done the same kinds of
long-term travel and yeah that's everything I wanted to cover in this
video I realize this is kind of a brief update but I think these will get more
detailed and lengthy in the near future and yeah I hope you found this video
interesting in some way. If there's any specific parts of the planning process
that you want me to cover in the next video please feel free to leave a
comment. I'm not sure when I'm going to do the third video of this series I
think it'll just depend on when I have done enough to fill up a video with me
talking about my gap here but next week I will be back with the regular video as
always so I will see you then bye
you