Please use the space below to provide details of the applicable situation (interrupted education for gap year). You may enter up to 650 words.
Sixteen years old and curious, I never put down my hands, still exploring every feature of life, despite the arguments my classmates brought to prevent me from taking the gap year. Following the night of "Congratulations to the Class of 2014," I paid my first monthly rent for the room I would live in for the next one year using the first earning I received from teaching chemistry Olympiad class in a local high school. For the next year I would stay with two other passionate roommates who started their courses in mechanical engineering in Augustus; I loved helping them with organic chemistry and mechanics, and they enjoyed introducing me to computer sciences. As win-win as it sounded, I also asked Adnan and Krisna to join me volunteering in Komunitas Jendela.
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Alief, while you wrote a good essay that looks to the past, present, and future, the essay is actually asking you to discuss the reasons why you decided to take a gap year. I believe that instead of discussing all of these things, you should instead focus on what you learned during the gap year. Tell us how you developed as a person and how the gap year helped you gain a level of maturity that you feel will help you achieve more academically now that you have a year to "ripen" your thoughts and interest in life. By doing this, you will have provided the solid reasons for your gap year. The person reading your essay is not interested in how you paid for your gap year, instead, he is more interested to learn about how the gap year helped you. If you had questions about life that you needed to find answers to, let us know if you did. Your gap year needs to have become an experience that resulted in a better you. While you told us about your many activities and achievements during this gap year, you never told us how it actually changed you as a person, as a student. Point out the difference between the you before the gap year then after and you will have written a very interesting paper showing the reasons that the gap year was a successful undertaking for you.
What do you think about this edited version?
End of high school. I was stuck, losing understanding of myself. I met an ironed border which questioned me: then what? After all stories of success and accolades, then what? After diploma and B.A. or B.S., then what? After the works, the late-night thoughts, the caffeinated cups, the messy papers, and the awards and promotions, then what? The thoughts were blur; I was exhausted. I had decided: I would take a gap year.
Following the night of "Congratulations to the Class of 2014," I paid my first monthly rent for the room I would live in for the next one year using the first earning I received from teaching chemistry Olympiad class in a local high school. For the next year I would stay with two roommates who started their courses in mechanical engineering in Augustus; I loved helping them with organic chemistry and mechanics, and they enjoyed introducing me to computer sciences. As win-win as it sounded, I also asked Adnan and Krisna to join me volunteering to teach in Komunitas Jendela.
Beside teaching, I also learned. Thirst of knowledge had infected my whole body, spreading wider and stronger than cancer. At the same time, I also caught the fever of a miscellany of interest, shifting between pscyhology and sciences, then going beyond, to the circle of literature, philosophy, foreign languages, world history, and anthropology. (Ah, I cannot forget to mention beatboxing, squash, and waltz, too). The good element about gap year was that I was free to take any course, anywhere, and anywhen. I solved more organic chemistry reactions and secured a job involving mosquitoes and papaya leaves in biology laboratory. I registered for six completely different courses in MOOC. I watched John Green's rants about the Mongols in world history crash courses. I signed up duolingo to get along with German, and took an advanced German courses in Bandung. I, too, joined the English conversation club.
Every morning, I put on my running shoes and enjoyed my cardio around the neighborhood: longer and faster every day. I met new faces in the routine-running-mates. Then, I practiced downward-facing dog on my yoga mat and proceeded some gym-like exercises, resulting in losing twenty kilograms which was later translated to goodbye to obessity. On weekends, I explored the city, accompanied by a camera and adequate photography skill taught by my sister; longer holidays would be filled by new trips around my exquisite country. When the courses and the trips ended, I would take my journal and wrote for pleasure. (One of my journal entry won a national travel blog contest). Good lessons were transformed into my column "Study of Humans" in Global Youth Journal, like "can we predict love?" and "the wrong thing about men's body today." In the mean time, I succeeded to publish my first novel-a romance!
Without gap year, I would not smell the aroma of first salary at sixteen, I would get lost in college, unsatisfied of what world has to offer me, I would never recognize Pailey's Analogy and Kepler Mission, I would still be trapped in a high risk of obessity, I would never have any idea of coding, and I would never answer the ironed border's questions. Through the year on (no, it's never off!) I interacted with people and environment of different perspectives, by which I learned to define my value, not only as a scientist or film director, but as a human being. I also caught up with my breath: those stamina which began shrinking after prominent joyful, yet exhausting thirteen years. I meditated. I reflected, looking through my inner mirror. For all of these accolades and successes and hard works and caffeine, I am starting to envision the future of Alief Moulana. Then what? Hold on, I am approcahing the zenith of understanding myself. Next pit stop: college.
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