Gap years have become an increasing trend across the United States over the past few years, with many young adults taking them to take a break from school, grow personally, gain life experiences, or do service, to name a few reasons.

Some seniors are taking the year to gain a better idea about what they want to do with their career, while also taking some time off from school to be able to relax a little and enjoy some things that they were not able to enjoy as much during the stresses of high school. One such senior is Joe Hillmeyer.

“With the stresses of high school, adding on looking for college was basically like adding on a whole other class, so I didn’t want to put that stress on myself and quickly jump into something and regret it later. Now I can take the time to really look around and see what I actually want to do and where I want to be,” said Hillmeyer.

Hillmeyer plans to work this upcoming year and do more research on colleges, while also gaining knowledge from other classmates who have already started college.

“For my career, I don’t want to do anything that involves sitting behind a desk, so I might go to a community college to get some of the core classes out of the way. Then I could go to a college that specializes in what I really want to do, whether that is photography or something else like that,” said Hillmeyer. “I’m looking forward to seeing how my friends are doing in school and asking them questions to hopefully narrow down what I want to do.”

Hillmeyer also plans to spend the year relaxing and enjoying nature through multiple different means.

“I plan on doing a lot of biking in Missouri and Illinois just to see the countryside and enjoy nature,” said Hillmeyer. “I also want to do a lot of stuff in nature like camping and fishing. I want to do all of the things that most people don’t think they really have time for until they retire. I want to do them now because I figure there is no point in waiting.”

Another senior, Zack Meirink, is taking the year to travel.

“I’ve always wanted to travel and I thought about it and I was like ‘after college I am going to have student loans and I am going to want to get a job right away so I can pay that off. So really the only time I can do it is between high school and college when I don’t have as many responsibilities,’ so that’s what I decided to do,” said Meirink.

Meirink will spend the first part of the year, from June to November, in Jackson Hole, Wyo. as a top-ropes instructor. He applied for the job online and chose it due to the location, pay, and housing. He will be staying in employee housing during his stay.

Although Meirink has only been to Jackson Hole during the winter to ski, he has a lot of experience climbing and is excited to be working in this setting.

“I have a lot of experience rock climbing at Upper Limits the past few years. I know all of the knots and the safety stuff for climbing. I knew that I wanted to do something outside and where I could move around, so this seemed like a good fit,” said Meirink.

After his time in Jackson Hole, Meirink plans on coming home for a few weeks before going to New Zealand from mid-December to the end of March. Meirink will be living and working on a sheep and cattle ranch in the Northwest part of the northern island between Auckland and Hamilton. The ranch is owned by his second aunt and her husband, who is from there, and Meirink has been invited to go down to visit them multiple times at different family reunions.

Meirink will be working in exchange for food and a place to stay. Part of his job will be to help maintain the land and put in fences because the ranch was recently purchased. Although he will be working a good amount of the time, he also plans to spend some time exploring the area.

“I am not exactly sure what I am going to do in my free time, but I definitely want to see the beach, Auckland, and the other sites around there. They already offered to take me backpacking for a few days around the country, so I think we will probably do that,” said Meirink.

After his gap year, Meirink will attend the University of Wyoming, and he hopes that his time off will help give him a better idea of what he would like to study.

“I am planning right now to major in environmental science, so both of these jobs get me outside and working—not so much in the science part of it—but to see exactly what I want to do. I am also interested in forestry and environmental engineering, so I hope to figure out the exact area that I want to study at some point in my gap year,” said Meirink.

Like Meirink, another senior, Tyler Trout, will be spending his year overseas with a program called Winterline. Unlike Meirink though, Trout will be beyond the border for nine months. After finding the program with help from his counselor Kate Kindbom, he knew how he wanted to spend his year.

“I did want to spend a whole year traveling. There were some programs that were only for a semester and I didn’t want to have to spend a whole semester at home. I wanted to spend as much time as I could traveling and I think I found the perfect program for that,” said Trout.

The trip will be taking him to ten countries in North and Central America, Europe, and Asia. Trout will be accompanied by a group of roughly 20 other travelers.

Winterline also boasts that those who travel will learn a hundred new skills such as navigation, cooking, scuba diving, photography, marine ecology, and more.

“I know in Costa Rica we are staying with families there. It will be a great way for me to learn. I think in Spanish class I have learned a lot, but you can’t really understand a language without immersion. I really hope to take a lot out of this trip and learn about the Spanish language and foreign cultures,” said Trout.

Trout has been a member of the Outdoor Adventure Club during his years at SLUH, joining them on excursions like the whitewater rafting trip.

“The club really opened my eyes up to adventure traveling, not staying in a hotel, but roughing it by staying in hostels and cabins. It taught me that you can travel all over for cheap if you’re willing to tough it out,” said Trout.

He also has an uncle who lives in Colombia who he has visited, and he has also spent time in Canada, so going out of the country is not a new experience for him. Although this is not his first time outside of the country, he is still nervous about his adventure.

“It’s something I’ve known I’ve wanted to do for awhile and I just can’t wait,” said Trout.

According to a national survey done by the Gap Year Association and Temple University, roughly 50 percent of the students who took a gap year in 2015 did some form of service during the year. Senior Matt Rauschenbach has decided to spend his entire gap year working in New York as part of an Americorps program called City Year.

Rauschenbach decided that he was going to take a gap year during the end of his sophomore year and into the beginning of his junior year, but he did not decide on exactly what he wanted to do until a little after that. He was introduced to City Year when his brother did the same program after high school and he decided to volunteer there after enjoying tutoring in high school at various grade schools throughout St. Louis, including St. Louis the King and St. Louis Language Immersion School.

“My brother did the exact same program on his first year out of high school and visiting him was when I first fell in love with New York City and what he was doing was very interesting to me,” said Rauschenbach. “I got to high school and tutored a lot, so I decided to combine my love for tutoring with my love for New York City.”

Although City Year is a national organization, Rauschenbach applied to City Year New York at the same time he was applying to colleges because the New York section is very competitive. According to Rauschenbach, the application consisted of multiple short online essays and a hour-long phone interview where they asked how he would react to different situations.

The program is ten months long and starts in August. Although he knows that he will be working as a one-on-one tutor in a school in Brooklyn, he does not know which age group he will be working with, as the program spans from grade schoolers to seniors in high school. The first three weeks of the program are training and he will know which age group he is working with after those few weeks.

“During those weeks, they kind of see how well you work with the other volunteers and what age group they think you will work best with based on how you act in different scenarios and activities,” said Rauschenbach.

Although he is given a small stipend for housing and food, the year will also bring some lessons in independence and management due to the fact that Rauschenbach has to find his own housing and feed himself.

“I’m really excited. I’m also really nervous because I don’t know what the year holds, but I think it is going to be a lot of fun,” said Rauschenbach. “I have to find my own apartment in New York City, so that’s going to be interesting. I get a living stipend on a bi-weekly basis to help pay for rent and food and stuff. I will also probably be getting federally-assisted money for food if I qualify, which I probably will because almost everybody who does City Year qualifies.”

After his gap year, Rauschenbach will attend Brown University in Providence, R.I.; he believes that City Year will give him many different life experiences to help him later in life.

“What I want to do for my career is connected broadly to this. They are both under the idea of being able to serve people. I think I want to do something in public policy or politics for my career, so I think they are related. It won’t necessarily be a year advancing my career in that field, but the basis for the idea is generally the same,” said Rauschenbach.