Gap YAAAH: A response to David Mitchell

A good gap year can be completely worthwhile, but David Mitchell's 'Beneath Borders Campaign' (as I'm naming it), in the Guardian, could mean as far as we get is the local Caravan site.

I remember my gap year or ‘yah’ before university as challenging and fulfilling in many ways. I don’t, however, remember thinking my carefully budgeted trip abroad "gadding around" like I was on some sort of passing visit with the royal family – me playing the role of a privileged Prince waving patronisingly at poor Ugandan children.

My travelling experience was far more involved, and very different from David Mitchell’s generalised view of a year out - it certainly didn’t turn me into a fantasist as he suggests, although I don’t think there’s anything wrong with dreaming.

If anything, my 5 months abroad gave me a clearer view of what lies outside of my small Essex town, and in a global economy where countries are becoming increasingly intertwined, knowing more of the “unreal world” I’d say is ever more important. Even if you are just eating Chop Suey in Beijing - I didn't, by the way.

A couple of my parent’s friends did suggest I may not return; that I could end up dreadlocked to my knees in Zambia and with skin so tanned I’d look like a homeless Crocodile Dundee. This coincides with the presumption A Level students are not ready to make significant decisions, and yet they’re often, shrewdly, grasping for that bit of freedom before being hoiked onto the next level of education, or a career ladder they're not sure about.

Before the 'jet setting' began, I worked full time for four months in a department store. I folded towels, and advised, badly, on bed sheets in the Home section. Home was in-fact where I wanted to be most of the time because it wasn’t a particularly riveting experience, but it was necessary.

I mean, Daddy sometimes gave me a lift to work, but he was never going to help me sponsor some underprivileged orphan from Kazakhstan. I had mum for that.

But seriously, it wasn’t a normal thing amongst my friends to go on a tropical travelling extravaganza, and it’s a shame that according to David Mitchell, the tuition fees increase means the year out before university will become a thing for "super rich kids". David, it’s sad you feel this is a “good outcome” – I’m sorry you ended up on some unsatisfactory InterRailing fun-faire to 'Bore-deaux', but for some of us it was a completely worthwhile experience.

I trekked through the jungle tracking ancient Mayan ruins and worked on a rainforest conservation project in Belize, and then took a month’s Spanish course in Guatemala.
It sounds cliché and a tad hooray henry but it wasn't - it was really quite eye opening. Who knows if I’ll ever be able to do anything like that again.

You’re right David, I never saw peccary (horned pigs), dodgy Guatemalan salesman, or worryingly sized rats during my three years at Bournemouth University, but if I had, I’d have been prepared. Yes, we had a few wandering addicts by my halls from the nearby homeless centre but nothing like the slums in India – I didn’t go there either.

When you’ve taken the opportunity to see more than what’s on your doorstep it’s that initiative which broadens the mind. The will to have an experience out of your comfort zone - I gained an independence which made me wholly more confident and helped me hugely at university, from the lecture hall to the union nightclub. I didn’t change the world, but I’m sure some people do.

David Mitchell is looking down at those who have thoroughly enjoyed themselves during a year out, and for taking a leap into the unknown.

It’s this sneering which makes him the snob, calling us the "vociferous" type for flinging ourselves full force into foreign cultures and enjoying every minute of it (maybe not the diarrhoea and vomitting).

And David, I didn’t buy ethnic ponchos or beaded bracelets, I brought back a hankering for black bean soup along with an aggressively coloured hammock, which, by the way, I still use.

When you’re young, who cares, you’ve got the rest of your life to be serious, I’m just annoyed the tuition fees rise means so many won't be able to afford the same leap into the unknown.