By Sophie Alcock
Illustrated by Lucas Ngai
The shorter days and crisper air heralds the start of the academic year, as we fall back into familiar yet mind-numbing cycles of introducing names, degrees, and backgrounds. For incoming freshers’ gap years are an increasingly enticing option to live life before selling your soul to an institution of higher education. Gap years bring their own benefits, such as warding off burnout from studying, doing long-term volunteering or work placements, and figuring out your path in life. I certainly have seen my fair share of former classmates posting pictures of their refreshing gap years in South East Asia or South America on Instagram. The quest to take a step back from ‘civilisation’ and find ‘raw’ cultural experiences brings students to poorer countries in the Global South viewed as ‘less developed’. There is also an increasing number of gap years which seems to entail the indulgence of adult vices like heavy drinking, clubbing, drugs, and sex. Yet doesn’t this debauchery take away from the cultural immersion they seek or the purpose of a gap year itself?
As much as we think that such self-indulgent gap years are a modern trend, these trips are similar in concept to the ‘Grand Tour’. This was a key coming-of-age tradition among the European upper class where the recently ‘of age’ would travel and live in a number of cities throughout Europe. It was seen as a way to gain a cultural education of the Classics. The romanticism of foreign and archaic cultures was a driving factor behind this phenomenon. Italy was a prominent destination with the ruins of the former Roman empire being a focal point of the tour. Furthermore young men away from their parents’ prying eyes would try numerous new and exciting things that would otherwise be met with severe consequences, like having affairs, indulging in sex, or drugs.
History lesson aside, we can use similar themes to evaluate the current trend in gap years. Gap year students may want to immerse themselves in a culture distant from theirs and take a step back from their fast-paced lives. They may find that after living in Laos or other Southeast Asian countries, they have gained a slower pace of life and newfound roots in spirituality – an experience which to some could be life-changing. However, this ‘raw’ element they see often stems from issues of inequality. Mountainous retreats and village residencies give wealthier individuals ‘the poor experience’, allowing them to cosplay as the underprivileged. When you take photos in elephant trousers ploughing a paddy field in Thailand, that’s not true cultural immersion, but privileged, curated poverty. Somehow inequality is viewed as attractive because it shows us how humanity ‘should be’ in a natural and spiritual state. Yet in reality what they seek are no frills, no-questions-asked vacations away from home.
Why does this privileged, curated poverty exist? It is the product of an unfortunate irony: when tourists and gap year students choose accommodation, typically the factors considered are price, safety, and location – which tends to shelter them away from the worst inequality and poverty. This completely defeats the purpose of their cultural immersion mission. A true understanding of the culture should mean not only staying with a host family but also participating in chores, responsibilities, and their lifestyles. Furthermore it prevents them from having meaningful interactions with the communities they seek to understand. Similar to the Grand Tour, cultural experiences act as commodities sold to tourists. This plays into the idealism in the way foreign cultures are viewed, whereby culture is not viewed on its own terms but through a fixed perspective. Before we travel we absorb curated content about our destination. In so doing we curate a worldview we expect to receive during our voyage. One difference today is that gap year pilgrimages romanticise inequality in the modern world. By commodifying experiences, like farming trips to Thailand, we commodify the experience of ‘poverty’ and the prejudices we hold. Gap year students undertake projects with communities just enough to enjoy their trip, without truly engaging with their day to day life. This defeats the purpose of a gap year trip, for it re-enforces privileged perspectives like the Grand Tour did.
Moreover being far away from home for the first time means you have the freedom to do previously prohibited or looked-down-upon activities. Whether the purpose of travel was to conduct illicit activities or whether it was a spontaneous decision, students on gap years undeniably take advantage of relaxed rules while travelling. Perhaps there’s an escapist dream where it doesn’t affect you or a certain mindset in being away from home hence you can ‘get away with it’. This unlocks the gates for gap year students to begin binge drinking, heavy clubbing, and other vices. I am entirely open to occasional nights of exploration. However it is unlikely locals frequent nightlife to the same degree some gap year students do.
To an extent, some countries are afraid to heavily penalise or incriminate tourists for fear of getting a bad reputation. While concerns of overtourism has led to crackdowns in recent years, it is unlikely a full crackdown will happen over fears of turning tourists away. Taking advantage of poor regulations for bad behaviour in a foreign country epitomises touristic privilege. In a similar vein to the Grand Tour, perhaps it is the aspect of privacy and anonymity you gain abroad that allows some to seek the forbidden. However just because something is available to you does not mean you should act on it.
The first taste of freedom away from home is a rite of passage: being able to structure your own activities, curate your lifestyle, and experience a different way of life is incredibly liberating. That being said, we should be mindful of the ways we make our first steps out of the nest. Gap years abide this mentality too, one could truly choose activities to broaden one’s horizons or loathe in self-indulgence and vices. Like the Grand Tour, we can cherry-pick experiences to feed the wealthy a slice of the curated culture they desire. And by no means does learning another way of life or culture lack value – but if all we are doing is reinforcing our own prejudices, then what are we really learning?
