hello and welcome back to the bliss bean I wanted this video to have a little more of a casual feel
so I'm sitting here on the ground it's actually really comfortable though so I'm starting a new
series and it's gonna be all about a gap year that I'm gonna take after high school and everything
leading up to it I just want to take you guys along on that journey with me this first video
is gonna be the very beginning why I want to take a gap here in the first place and then the first
steps that I have taken to planning it so why do I want to take a gap year I want to take a
gap year because I don't like school I'm just kidding I have a lot of reasons so first off
I love traveling and I want to see the world and what better time than after high school
probably at no point in my life will I have as much freedom as I do right after high school I
won't be in school I won't be in a relationship and I won't have a family I feel like that's an
opportunity I need to take advantage of second College is expensive as you might know already
and I don't want to jump into it without knowing what it is that I actually want to get out of
it that's gonna kind of be reason number three I don't really feel like I have a clear-cut career
path yet and I know no one really has a clear career path I have all of these interests and
different things like photography and filmmaking and design and I'm not even entirely sure what I
would major in in college and so I don't want to make that decision until I have some time
to experience those things more an experiment another reason is my parents they didn't take
a gap year but when they were in college even though they didn't have a lot of money they
just traveled all around the Europe in a car and that has rubbed off on me a lot because I
love to travel I just feel like travel is a value in our family you know another reason is I would
like to start my gap year by spending a couple of months in Lithuania Lithuania is where I was born
and the last time I visited was right before 8th grade so it's been a while since I've been back we
do speak Lithuanian at home but I can definitely feel it fading it which is kind of scary I have to
substitute English words when I forget Lithuanian and so I would like to go back for a few months
and visit family like refresh my Lithuanian skills and then the last reason is practicing languages
I mentioned that with Lithuania but I would also really like to spend time in Spain so that I can
practice Spanish outside of the classroom and then I've also just started learning Korean and
I will start learning French next school year so it would just be amazing to get like this
immersive language experience so a big question with gap years is do you apply for college during
your senior year or do you apply during your gap year and I am deciding to apply during my gap year
mainly because I am taking this gap year partly to figure out what it is that I want to major in and
where I would like to study in the first place I feel like I don't have answers to those questions
yet and I'm going off in search of those answers so it doesn't make sense to me to apply right now
but I do have to start thinking about it I talked to my counselor I have to make sure that my school
still has my transcript so I can send it off on I need to get teacher recommendations cuz in a year
two years time they'll have forgotten what kind of student I was so yeah there's a couple of things
that you need to prepare during your senior year even if you're not applying for college during
your senior year I think a common misconception about gap years is that colleges don't want you
to take a gap year or that they'll look down on you for doing that I don't know about all colleges
but from the research that I've done according to my research the common consensus seems to be that
colleges appreciate gap years and they acknowledge the enrichment that comes from taking a gap year I
know for example that Harvard actually encourages admitted students to take a gap year so that also
is not something I'm worried about I think that if anything taking a gap year will help me get into
the college that I want to get into so usually the first step of anything is the hardest and
that was true for this experience not because it was difficult but because I just had no idea
where to start so first of all I decided to start by just reading articles about gap years that was
like me dipping my toe into the water of gap years after that what I did was I signed up for an email
challenge there's this website called boot señal and it's basically all about travel but maybe more
specifically long-term travel like round-the-world trips and so I signed up for their email challenge
and it's a 30 day email course each day they take you through a different aspect of planning your
gap year when summer started I had the perfect opportunity to get it done I even got a special
notebook to take notes in this is a free notebook honestly if you put the words free and notebook
in the same sentence that is music to my ears it's a pretty small notebook I just thought
it was super like traveling because of the red and blue stripes and then the French writing so
each day I would take notes on what I learned I mentioned that they have like action steps to do
every day and I didn't do all of them because my cap here is still like a year out and so not all
of them were really immediately relevant to me but I'll probably go back and do them later the
second day of the challenge was about figuring out what you're passionate about and I really
appreciated that they started with this because I feel like before you start planning your gap
here you should figure out why you're taking a gap here so basically they asked what are
you passionate about and then how will a gap your help you develop those passions oh I forgot about
this page so I wrote down some quotes that really inspired me this is one from the email don't push
forward or let others push you forward into a life that is not consciously of your own choosing and
that really meant a lot to me because I feel like there's a lot of like momentum in high school to
follow a certain path it's high school college career no question about it and I don't want to
be pushed into college straight away just because it's the path that's set out for me another quote
is by Anthony Bourdain if I'm an advocate for anything it's to move as far as you can as much
as you can across the ocean or simply across the river the extent to which you can walk in someone
else's shoes or at least eat their food it's a plus for everybody open your mind get off the
couch move I don't have anything to say about that I'll just leave it there the next day's challenge
was choosing the pillars of your trip so basically like the places that you really really really want
to visit and everything y'all see we'll build it around it I made a long list and then I started
the places that I really had my heart set on so I start with Lithuania Spain South Korea the Great
Wall of China and Bali some of the days I had to do research for every single country that I plan
to visit so for example day 8 was all about immunizations and so I made a table about the
requirements for each country and then there was another day that was about visas if I could find
that I think that was the longest section that I took notes on I just find it really fascinating
for example it's apparently pretty hard to be said of going to China so you need a lot of paperwork
ok I should clarify that I have a Lithuanian passport so I don't know about the requirements
for people with u.s. passport for South Korea I do not need a visa and I can stay for 90 days
so that's a couple of like the highlight pages I would say but let me know if you want for me to do
a full tour of my note book because there's a lot of interesting stuff in here I'll also leave the
link for the email challenge in the description I highly recommend it especially if you have no
idea where to start like I did another thing that I've done to prepare is that I traveled solo for
the first time I traveled from Long Island back home to Wisconsin all by myself it was a really
eye-opening experience I learned things like how difficult it is to get into a bathroom stall
with your luggage I got comfortable with eating alone or eating on a table with strangers when
all the tables were full I had to navigate train stations and purchase subway and bus tickets so
what are my next steps okay so the main next step is saving money some of the days of the
email challenge took you through like estimating a budget and it really isn't as bad as I thought
it would be especially because I plan on doing a lot of work aways you may have heard of woofing
which is working on organic farms around the world but then there's also different kinds of
work ways where you might be like working out of bed and breakfast somewhere where you've helped
business owners in exchange for room and board so different experiences like that I think will
be really important because they'll save so much money and also just be interesting things to try
I don't currently make money from blogging but I stick with it because I hope that in the future
I'll be able to and other things I'm currently doing are working for my parents business and
then I also have like a photography business that I started about a month ago and that has actually
been going really really well so I've been making money from those things and then I've
been setting goals I have a goal for 2018 and then I've been breaking that up into monthly goals for
how much money I want to earn another important next step is to start involving my parents more
in the process I didn't really want to have any like deep conversations with them until I had
done a good amount of research and I think I've done now because I didn't want them to see me
as unprepared I want to be able to answer the questions or the doubts that they might have
I think something that will really help is the fact that I survived that trip from Long Island
to Wisconsin I think I proved myself somewhat and I also stayed way under budget for that trip which
they were impressed with and I was like yeah I'm good at traveling I think being that my gap here
is still a year away those are good steps to be focusing on and not too much of like the super
super specifics and then to finish off the video I wanted to do like a my hopes for this series the
reason I started this series is because I would like to document my experience for other people
who are looking to take a gap year but also for myself for a future me who will be able to look
back on the planning process and the trip and then also for my family and friends to follow
along probably the planning process won't be interesting to them but definitely the actual
travel part of it I'll have a few more episodes like this one where I talk about the planning
part and then there will definitely be a lot of videos once I actually get on the road it feels
really weird to be saying that because it's a year away but I think I need to start really
talking about it like it's a concrete thing so that I can really like mentally commit myself
to this if you are someone who was planning a gap here right now or s taking a gap year
don't be a stranger I would love to connect and to talk to someone who is going through or has gone
through a similar experience and then very very last thing is don't forget to like this video
if you enjoyed watching it and I realize this pretty different from other videos that I've done
but if you enjoyed this video or any of my other videos please subscribe to my channel so that you
can stay updated on all of my newest videos and that's all for me for today so until next time bye