--- title: What A Successful Gap Year Looks Like | TIME description: Not all gap years are the same, but many feature the same components. canonical: https://time.com/video/SIVd9rNu/ og:title: What A Successful Gap Year Looks Like og:description: Not all gap years are the same, but many feature the same components. og:url: https://time.com/video/SIVd9rNu/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/SIVd9rNu/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What A Successful Gap Year Looks Like twitter:description: Not all gap years are the same, but many feature the same components. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/SIVd9rNu/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # What A Successful Gap Year Looks Like > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: What A Successful Gap Year Looks Like [Watch (HLS stream): What A Successful Gap Year Looks Like](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/SIVd9rNu.m3u8) (1:23)  _Published 2016-01-13. Not all gap years are the same, but many feature the same components._ --- Jul 27, 2023 7:26 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [How to Negotiate a Gap Year](/video/2Au7Dk3M/) ### How to Negotiate a Gap Year [How Gap Years Translate to the Right Career](/video/z2hBgUPx/) ### How Gap Years Translate to the Right Career [Gap Years Translate to College Success](/video/dKpLobAj/) ### Gap Years Translate to College Success --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] So at first you're experiencially focused, and so that's one is mentorship. When we talk about mentorship, that's about identifying those key learning opportunities in the moment when a student is really right for a deeper understanding of whatever the topic is that they're in front of. The other half of the mentorship pieces around safety and security. So many gap students are going overseas to develop In countries. And having someone there to be able to track and make sure that students are doing well, that they're, you know, physically okay. That's a big part of it. The second of the three is self- reflection. So, you can't really call an experience learning until somebody's had the opportunity to reflect on it, and at the AGA we don't really care what that looks like. It could be a journal, it could be videography, it could be music, it could be writing papers, any of those would suffice. And then the other two pieces are less experientially motivated, but also important. And that has to do with learning at the edge of your comfort zone. So we find that when you learn most is when you are just on the edge of what's comfortable. And then the other piece that we're interested in really cultivating is Global CItizens. So learning to see things from another's perspective. It's like, I often times say in this generation Everybody will have a boss or be a boss of someone from another culture. So, learning how to integrate through whatever cultural norms and sort of fortes, foibles, whatever might show up in those interactions, it's a very important part to success and a career down the road. 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