Some people say that high school graduate do not need to take a year off to travel or work before going to the college. They insist that summer vocations are enough for travel or work. However, I agree with a one year break before college enterence for two reasons.
First, students need recreation after arduous high school years.
Second, early work experence is necessary for career choices.
Above all, high school grads should have distractions before studying in earnest.
Of course, student may find it hard to get back to study after a long break.
However, students just out of high school are not willing to devote themselves to academic activities.
After enough refreshment student are likely eager to study from the first year of college.
Korea is known for the so-called examination hell which means the fierce competetion for college admission.
Students especially in the last year of high school devote all their life to prepare for the national college enterence exam.
They study at cram school or are tutored after school untile late night.
Many boys and girls study one more year after finishing high school to get into better university.
Under this circumstance, college student tend to focus on academic activities but on fun ones: drinking, dating and fun activities.
This is because why they want to compansate themselves for what they sacrificed during the exam hell.
The prooblem is that most of college student have a hard time to making up for the missed study untile graduation.
This is where the need for taking a year off before entering a university comes in.
If students have enough fun traveling, they will be able to put all their energy right into studying at college from the begining without wasting time.
This shows taking one year off is needed.
Next, an appropreate career path can be chosen after work experence.
It is true that student have an oportunity to decide on their major in the first year of college.
Unfortunatly, most of students are not fully prepared to make decision for their future career.
On the contrary, experences for one year will help students figure out what job they are fit for.
Let me take a friend of mine for example.
He majored in busseness management and wanted to work for a major company after graduation.
However, he had to change all his future plan after the second winter vacation when he taugh middle school part time.
While teaching them he greatly enjoyed teaching and found himself to love teaching and taking care of boys and girls.
Naturally, he realized that not an office worker but an educator is his calling.
Not surprisingly, he chose to study education as a double major.
Unfortunatly, remaining two years were not enough to juggle two majors, so he enrolled one more semester.
Obviously, it is pity that he did not have any oportunity to expperence teaching career before university education.
It would have saved him time and money.
In this sense, students have a year for work experence.
|