I’ve little sympathy for today’s gap year hedonists
AT a girls’ school conference this week, a city lawyer stood up and said the unsayable. Don’t bother with a gap-year experience, students were informed. Forget about working in Koh samui or in Chinese orphanages or a monkey sanctuary in Borneo. if you want to impress future employers, do yourself a favour. Go and get a job in a local sports shop or a supermarket instead.
oooh. imagine the sharp intake of horrified breath from the girls. after all, Chloe has already bought her sarongs for Fiji. Grace has booked her diving lessons in Rakiura. and sophie can’t possibly work on the cold meats counter at Tesco because she is allergic to anything that isn’t organic, grass-fed and nearly as well brought up as she is.
But good for sandie okoro, global lead lawyer for HSBC Global asset Management, who didn’t mince her words. her argument is that students today would be better off getting ‘oldfashioned saturday jobs’ rather than spending 12 months on a far-flung, thinly disguised holiday, pretending to be doing good works while saving the world one mojito at a time.
That’s not to say that all gappers float about i n palm- print cheesecloth kaftans, working in a Mexican trinket shop while convincing themselves they are the liberators of the Third World.
some really do go out and do difficult jobs in dangerous situations, and they deserve all the credit that comes their way for their efforts. however, it is no secret that few gap- year projects display much independence or grit.
Far too many tread a formulaic path to Thailand perhaps, or Vietnam; a journey that trumpets nothing except the fact that Daddy is rich, money is no object and aren’t the bars in ho Chi Minh City, like, totally wicked?
SPeaKinG at the Girls’ Day school Trust conference, okoro said that as an employer of graduates, she yearned to see something different on a CV, something ‘mundane and ordinary’. she thought that working somewhere such as JD sports for a year and maybe moving up to supervisor was just as significant and should be valued.
she is so right. i would argue that it is even more valuable, not to say quietly honourable. so hats off to students who have to work in the dreary old UK during the summer holidays; those who can’t fulfil themselves watching the sunset in ipanema because they have to fund themselves instead. Please com- fort yourselves with the knowledge that dealing with the public or staying cheerful while toiling away in a mundane job is a much more character-building experience. it says a lot about you, and your determination to succeed. it instils a work ethic that will never let you down.
anyway, what is it with this gap-year nonsense? Perhaps it’s just a generational thing, but i didn’t have a gap year and i didn’t know anyone who did. From school to college, tech, university or straight into a job, we just got on with it and were grateful for the opportunities. Take a year off to check out the vibes in Byron Bay or whatever? Unthinkable.
That’s one reason why i have only a bee- drop smidgen of sympathy for eleanor hawkins, the 23- year- old British gapper from Derby who has been threatened with jail in Malaysia.
she was one of the Western tourists who posed naked on top of a sacred mountain. To enhance their transcendental experience, of course. in a Muslim country, at that.
Locals believe their indecency angered the gods and triggered an earthquake that killed 18 people. a tribal chief has called on eleanor and her friends to pay a fine of ten buffalo or face jail.
seems fair enough to me. You don’t have to subscribe to local beliefs to respect their traditions. once upon a time, British travellers would take a quiet pride in being ambassadors for their country, not behave like louts.
ELeanoR was photographed after she had been detained at sabah airport. The former public schoolgirl looked understandably upset and — may i say — just a little bit sulky, too. it’s always the kids in Magaluf who are blamed for bad behaviour abroad, but sometimes a sense of entitlement can be a far worse handicap than a sense of intoxication.
so please, can hedonistic gappers trying to find themselves respect the culture of others? and understand that the most amazing thing about a destination isn’t that you went there.