Gap Years Do Not Exist

The wrong way to think about time.

I just got back to Georgia and I have been thinking a lot about time on my trip to Berlin. How we measure it, how we experience it, how it changes our actions.

Time always comes up when I introduce myself to people. The first question is always, "What are you doing in Georgia?" The easiest response is that I am doing a gap year (gap 6 months? Some time off?) and teaching at a school before going back to NYC to get a real job. But I find this a bit disingenuous. The most valuable thing I have learned on my trip is that the line of life is not straight. Be it in a restaurant in Kutaisi or a club in Berlin, I have met more people from different walks of life than I ever had in Columbia.

I grew up in the professional pipeline: going to an elite high school, then to an elite college, then to an elite internship. In this pipeline time is very regimented, 4 years High School, 4 years college, 2 years intense job, then 40 years of another job, then retire. You are given some opportunities for a break such as right before or after college for a gap year, a few years after you work for B-school, and then after maybe a sabbatical, then you retire, hopefully.

When you go through these pipelines, you expect that everyone else is also on this pipeline. You start working, then everyone in the office is also on the timeline, then unless you have a very interesting friend group, you can't imagine a different timeline. The issue with this timeline is that it's very real for a segment of the population that is the most productive and makes the most money (if you want to work at KKR, you better believe this timeline). So it is real for everyone else to some degree, just some people are more exposed than others. If you're an investment analyst at Goldman you definitely know when the fiscal quarter ends, if you run a coffee shop in Italy you might be very surprised one year to find lots of American bankers very happy to buy lots of drinks.

On this trip I realized that this timeline is so entrenched in our collective mindset that it has become real, that there is no way to be completely out of it. Except, if you accept it and act on it, and secretly ignore it.

The modern economy is composed of an infinite series of games, that we are all playing. Who will make the best trade, who will get the promotion, who will get the best house. These are all games that we play. It's important to understand what these games are, which ones you should play and which ones are not worth your time, the answer is different for everyone.

I'm currently playing the gap year game right now, the space of time that is socially allotted to new grads before they are welcomed back to the official corporate workforce. But the secret is that gap years are not real, I could extend this time forever, just make this my life (not that I want to, I'm exhausted). Do you really think hunter gathers had gap years? "Hey guys, I know we are collecting food, but I'm just going to run off for a few full moons and come back and hope everything is groovy. See ya!" No, that never happened. This gap year is not a little getaway for me, this is a year in my actual life, that started on November 19, 1999 and will end at some point. This is not magically borrowed time, this is time that could be used for other things, but I'm deciding to use it like this right now. Gap years do not really exist, it's just time passing, whether we like it or not.

There is one game that is actually not a game but is just the true essence of life, and that's friends and family. Your partner, husband or wife, is not a game you can play or a social construction like analyst programs or gap years, they are the flesh and blood that makes your life meaningful. A job is a job, you get it, you work, you move on, you get fired. Your family, whether you like it or not, is your family forever. You only get one mother and father, and your child is only 2 years old for 1 year. When it comes to family, it is not a game but actually just life. Family and friends are the keys to life, not work (even though it is very important.)

I am on a gap year (6 months, whatever), when I started I thought this could pause time then I would just restart it when it was over, but no, time is going by extremely quickly, and by the time it's over I will be a different person. This is not actually a gap year, this is just my life. You are also not in college, or working, or retired, you are just alive. So don't forget to live.

James Kettle