Discussion: Article

Maybe a solution is for more students to take a gap year before college ;)

You're right even though you're kind of joking! The system sends you through at such a rapid rate with no time to breathe, and I think everyone needs a bit more head space than that!

ours will definitely be encouraged, if not required, to break the progression from school to Uni

Uni should be about learning about life, how to look after yourself as well as academic learning. Shame US seems to be infantalising itself even at Uni level - I blame the parents...

I matured a lot during my year out & I'm not sure that I would have coped with university if I hadn't had the year out. As a person I got a lot more confident, my driving improved with a daily commute, I learnt to program in C (a useful skill that got me my current job), and I earnt some money which helped to fund my time at university (plus the firm I worked for sponsored me). The downside (which my tutors warned me about) was that I got out of the habit of studying, which required effort to reacquire.

I wish there were more commonly on & off ramps between school and work (and life). Think it would be better to go back and forth between the two during a lifetime rather than school ...school...school...
work...work...work...work...work...
retire.

Work can make you value school more & get more out of it and work can help you see what you want/need to learn.

Thanks for pointing out this article and ditto to Beck's and the blogger's observations. Many of the concerns and discussions described in the article are frequent conversations between university professors. The article reminded me, unfortunately, of my impression that student resilience is becoming more of a gift of a small group of well grounded students rather than a general trait of college students. Figuring out how to reestablish this trait is a worthy aim. An off-year may be part of it but the prep work for this starts earlier in elementary and high school and with parenting.