I had just completed my bachelors and was ready to start my master’s in the US, but the world came to a halt. Studying at Zoom University was not worth it for me, and given the time I had spent trying to get into something like Purdue, I said to myself that what will one year do? Plus, I could explore a lot about myself.

So, COVID was the main reason why I had taken the gap year. But now that I had taken the gap year, there are so many benefits of taking a gap year and trying to understand yourself, especially coming from the Indian education setup: the hectic high school and straight into bachelors where you might not have that understanding of how to make the most of the Gold Mine that is the United States. But if you don’t know how to use them and you don’t know yourself well enough to use them, you are not going to make the most out of it. And I am so glad I had this gap year.

From a creative perspective, I have a lot to say about it, about the thing I did like resuming Guitar and starting blogging and newsletter writing and this website on which you are reading my story, but on another note, I found myself burnt out after my bachelors. 8 years of constant slogging to get into my dream university. And because of the things I had to do, with a number of failed attempts to get the things I wanted, it can get a lot. And so I knew that I needed a break: from constitutionalism: I would be in one rat race, and then jump into another rat race, and not really know what to do with my life. And so, in a way, I was so grateful for that break, and the quality time I got with my family meant the world to me.