Lessons learnt from a gap year: part one

No, I didn’t do any of my recommended summer reading, nor did I learn the suggested vocab list. However, my ‘gap yah’ wasn’t all just party-hostels either. I ended up working at an international school in Malaysia. 6,584 miles away from my family, I started my first ever serious job, in a country I had only ever read about. Likewise, my friends, Nikita and Bella expressed the lessons they learnt on their own years off. Having initially begun at another university, Bella decided instead to go into work before eventually applying to Warwick, and Nikita interned over the summer with Blind in Business, a visual impairment and disability charity. Here are the realisations we took away from our three very different experiences.  

Food is the centre of everything

You might have heard the phrase ‘the kitchen is the heart of the home’. The same applies at university – the kitchen is the heart of the halls. It’s where you socialise, bond with your flatmates over food, and perhaps even attempt some actual cooking. Travelling across Southeast Asia, I learned that food has the ability to unite people no matter the destination. Meals bring family and friends together. Similarly, locals take pride in presenting traditional dishes to tourists. Plumes of barbecue smoke surrounded the pavements of Vietnam, where old men sat at tiny, knee-height tables, eating together and playing cards in the heat. In Thailand, roadside stalls of anything from Pad Thai to banana pancakes created a bustle in the street. My favourite local restaurant in Malaysia would occassionally project football matches in the car park to full tables of Roti Canai lovers. I was also lucky enough to share a Boodle Fight with my host family in the Philippines. Hours had gone into the preparation of the feast. Laying down banana leaves and piling the food directly on top, we said a prayer before standing and, using only our hands, finished the delicious meal within 15 minutes. The centrality of food to a community is something I found every culture shared.

A smile is the same in every language

It might be slightly cheesy, but it’s true.Relying on body language to get past verbal language barriers during my year off, meant I made friends with those I could barely hold a conversation with. For example, Norman, the manager of a local cake shop in Malaysia, just laughed when I paid for an entire portion of cake using 10 and 20 Sen coins. When our bus broke down in the middle of Cambodia, the bus stewardess exchanged our Vietnamese dong straight out of her purse. Being friendly with the receptionist at our hostel in Thailand changed my experience of Songkran, the Thai new year, as she kindly ended up giving us a lift to where the water festival was being celebrated. I realised the principle of positive, welcoming body language benefitted others too whilst living on campus in Malaysia. As an international school, the beginning of the year naturally saw new students, asking for directions or looking for someone to play with at break time.Heading to university for the first time can also feel like you are arriving in a foreign country. Walking around campus now, I feel encouraged to always say hello to familiar faces, and even hold the door open for those I don’t know. I’ve realised that people are willing to help if you just ask, and you that you don’t necessarily even need the same language to communicate. Bear this in mind if you find yourself chatting to someone who’s passionate about Astronomy, or an avid Quidditch player, and it seems like they’re no longer speaking English.