Oliver Lete-Straka

I had already had thoughts of taking a gap year after high school, but not getting into UofM was definitely a jab that swung me towards finalizing that choice and I’m so glad that I have.

In the past six months, I’ve hopped on a plane at most every six weeks, usually less, and traveled somewhere new most of the time. I’ve had some of the happiest, most lonely, scariest, and most mind-blowing moments of my entire life and I can’t even explain how grateful I am.

I began my gap year traveling through South America, specifically Peru and Chilean Patagonia, for 10 weeks with a gap year program called ARCC. I was nervous as hell. I had never traveled with a group of people that I had never met before going to a country that I didn’t fluently speak the language of. I had never felt so vulnerable in my life.

It’s also important to mention that a significant part of the program was that for the first four weeks of the program the students would not have their phones. I hadn’t gone that long without my phone since I was 15 years old after freshman year, so it had been a while.

The first flight with my group was horrible. I couldn’t sleep at all and my butt and legs were getting awfully antsy. The plane did have the little screens for TVs, but sadly I had no plug-in headphones, so I took advantage of my no-phone situation and I asked to play chess with one of my new peers. I’m terrible at chess but it was fun to meet my now friend Jonah this way.

Once I lost every one of our four games, I was burnt out and began to journal. This journal was given to my dad by the Navy when he worked in an Army hospital in Tennessee and it is a nice journal, or at least when I first got it, it was nice. It has a hard cover and the paper feels thin, but tough. This journal became one of my main forms of entertainment. Everyday I would recap the day. I wrote about my time working with small farmer towns in the valleys of the Andes, working with high school students in their English classes, and hiking 49 miles. Looking back on it now, it feels like I was living a whole other life with how much we did every week and every day. In addition to my recaps, I would of course doodle and write song lyrics.

One memory or whole day that stands out is when I was working and living in a permaculture farm called Alma Verde in Puerto Guadal, Patagonia, Chile. My group and I followed one of the farmers on a hike to a waterfall that he knew about.

We began walking along the lake that Puerto Guadal sat on. We walked for about 12 miles, or at least that’s what it felt like based on the aching in my legs. At one point a local dog joined us on the hike and it gave a bit of a pickup to keep going. It was worth it. We made it to this huge, gushing, cartoonishly-beautiful waterfall. It was ridiculous how gorgeous it was. It was loud and big and felt like it pulled straight out of the movie Avatar.

After a bit of rest at the top of the waterfall, the mist cooling down and food in our systems we were ready to head back. Since we were exhausted, we decided to call the owner of the dog that we had been with and we asked her to catch a ride. She came in her large pick-up and like a movie, we all hopped in the bed of the truck. Feeling exhausted, with sore muscles and now with the lake wind blowing on my face, I had never felt more alive.

I’m currently in New York City doing the gap year program at The School of New York Times. I’ve been studying journalism through the lens of the different sections of the New York Times newspaper like politics, books, and the arts. It has grown my love for writing and I get to live in NYC!

We’ve done lots of exploration through the city, which is more amazing than I could have ever imagined. There’s never a dull moment here. If I’m feeling bored I can just take a walk outside and there’s something happening.

We’ve visited some amazing museums like the National Museum of the American Indian, Fotografiska, and the MET. We’ve also gone to many neighborhoods like Flushing, Astoria, and Jackson Heights in search of some fantastic restaurants and we found them.

In Jackson Heights I went to a Nepali restaurant for a restaurant review assignment. It was fun to explore a new kind of cuisine and it was so good. The restaurant was small and the food tasted homemade, not to mention it felt like the two of my friends and I were treated like family in there.

Self reflection and being in the moment have been two big themes for myself this year. As corny as it might sound, this year made me think about the journey I’ve had and how there really is no true destination. You’re just always moving on. I’ve also realized how much I want to continue writing in the future and how much I love working with kids. It now makes sense why I’ve always liked the idea of being an educator.

For those thinking of taking a gap year, I can’t recommend it enough. Even if traveling isn’t an option, a year to cool down and to think is so good.