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Are you feeling burnt out from your classes? Floating through college? Have an opportunity outside of Duke you can’t pass up? A gap might be right for you. Gap semesters or years, where you take time off from your studies to focus on other things, aren’t just something you can take before you start college, but a valuable opportunity for any stage of your journey in higher education.
You know that feeling when you work really hard on an assignment? You stay up late and wake up early. You diligently spend hours in the Gothic Reading Room reading and re-reading your writing, checking the logic of your algorithm or crafting that perfectly persuasive memo. And then you submit it and get a grade back. It’s an “A” and you’re stoked. Then the high wears off. You take back the paper and you admire the grade one last time. Then, you throw it in the trash or never open the document tab again.
Ah, the first day of class. You brush your hair, show up on time and pick your seat for the rest of the semester (or, at least, for the days you end up attending). The professor goes through the usual spiel of accessing the course website, the grading scheme and a little about them. As they share the syllabus and read the Duke Community Standard, you notice something new — the class policy on the use of AI.
As it happens with every computer science recitation section during class bookbagging, the focus of the meeting shifted from the assigned worksheet to course recommendations for the next semester. Eager underclassmen peppered the TAs and seniors with questions as they searched for courses that would be valuable for them — “valuable” being defined as either fascinating, pre-professionally helpful or easy.
Duke and anxiety go hand in hand. Freshman year, it was worry about making friends. Sophomore year — joining the right clubs. Junior year was getting a prestigious internship. And now as seniors, we worry about scoring a great first job.
I was in ninth grade when my grandfather told me I should found a non-profit. His pitch wasn’t that this would be a way to positively change the world, but rather help me get into an elite college. Why a non-profit? Because top universities said they value community service in their admission decisions. So, I started a non-profit. We began collecting used school supplies destined for the landfill and sent them to grade schools in developing countries. We completed this process once, realized shipping internationally was incredibly expensive, and never sent another package. Then, I moved onto other pursuits that would look good on a resume: academic publishing.
