So, it’s grad school acceptance season. Happy for you, or sorry that happened, or sorry you’ve had to listen to everyone around you talk about it for the past six months. This is a strange time of year for those of us in the post-secondary-educational rat race. Even if you have no hat in this ring, the spectre of Grad School is all-consuming, and no matter your status in relation to it, it has this funny way of making you feel like you wasted every second you had since you graduated high school and have done nothing useful or productive with your life.
I remember last year, when I first tried my hand at applying and received a slew of rejection emails, it was hard. It made me feel like I had worked tirelessly throughout my degree on things that didn’t even matter, that even though I was putting everything I had into things I was passionate about it somehow wasn’t the “right” combination of things, and thus did not appeal to any admissions committees. All my wonderful, smart friends who I had worked alongside in multiple endeavours got into their top choices at top schools and I was left wondering where the heck it all went wrong. Of course, my perspective on all this has changed dramatically in the year since it happened, but I was reminded of it in a recent conversation with a friend who is currently finishing up their undergrad. This friend did not apply for grad school this year. We talked about how alienating it can feel to watch everyone around you get accepted into this elite academic club, even if it’s not necessarily a club you wanted admission to in the first place. We also talked about how challenging it is to complete your undergraduate degree and produce what everyone expects to be your best-work-to-date when you can’t share in the relief of knowing what you’re doing with your life in September. When I was applying in fourth year, I always told myself that I’d take the summer in between to completely and entirely relax—no school, maybe a little bit of work, but most importantly, no pressure. When I did not get admitted, that break disappeared before my eyes, and in the last months of my degree I felt more burnt out than ever.
Maybe I’m coping, but looking back on it now I wouldn’t change a thing. Obviously it builds character to deal with rejection, and I told myself that at the time, but I see now how crucial it was for me to learn that there is indeed a whole other world that exists outside of school. I did this while working, and now I am doing it while not working, and both have been richly formative in varied ways, but I am perpetually astonished at how different I feel from the person I was a year ago. I think when you’re in school—especially at a place like U of T, and especially at a place like Daniels—it is far too easy to get caught up in the romance of spending your entire career safe within the institutions of architecture, art, and academia. I was an enthusiastic proponent of this fantasy myself! It wasn’t until I graduated and spent some time away that I saw, in full, what I missed during my time there and what I would continue to miss had I dove headfirst into a career in those areas.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend that getting into grad school last year wouldn’t have been nice, but I don’t think it’s even something I can accurately assess now. The version of me that has had a break from school for almost twelve months thinks that it would have been nice, but the version of me twelve months ago that was exhausted from school, work, and a lack of Vitamin D would not have been so psyched to start a new program so soon, and I don’t think she would have been satisfied with the work she created while there. I think I needed some sort of forced intervention to show me that growth/learning/whatever you want to call it is, in fact, best done in multiple different contexts and from multiple disparate sources. Most importantly, leisure is a necessary part of practice and progress. I wouldn’t have believed this in fourth year if you beat me over the head with it. But it is in leisure that we develop interests, that we iterate ideas and find inspiration. I remember in 2021 watching a YouTube video, and the person who made it (whose name now escapes me) was talking about how important it is, especially as someone doing creative work, to be bored. At the time, I figured this meant that I shouldn’t fill my liminal moments with listening to music or reading a book or going on that damn phone, but should instead sit in my surroundings and allow my mind to wander. While I still think this interpretation rings true, I realize now that making time for boredom also means allowing yourself to take proper breaks and vacating your mind from whatever it is that you work hardest on. We are led to believe that leisure must be earned, and that time not spent in school or at work is time wasted. However, like many other good and delicious things, sometimes we just need to give ourselves, and our ideas, adequate time to marinate. It is in that seemingly nothing-space that we mature.
This is precisely why, whenever I have talked to friends or colleagues who are finishing their undergraduate degrees this year and worried about applying or being admitted to grad school, I have always said “hey man, don’t even worry about it. Take the gap year. It’ll change your life.” Of course, I do think the gap year comes at different times for different people. Perhaps for some it comes after graduate studies, or before graduate studies and after working for a year or two. Perhaps you don’t do graduate studies at all, and you take some time before working or you take a leave of absence while working or you quit your job to go explore. Everyone’s timeline is different (but, in my opinion, it should happen before you turn 30). Maybe it happens in chunks of a few months, maybe it happens more than once, maybe you use it to work a meaningless job or learn a skill you’ve always wanted to. Really, the gap year is a state of mind, and there is no right way to do it. I think you’ll know you’re succeeding in it when it makes you feel like yourself again.