WORK WITH ANIMALS ON YOUR CAREER BREAK
"I got to see the real Bolivia, and it felt good to give something back, not just pass through the country in ignorance"
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TRAIN AS A
YACHTMASTER
Sail all over Europe while gaining the skills and qualifications to skipper a yacht anywhere in the World
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Gap Years for Grown Ups
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Your thoughts and feedback would be great - newsite@gapyear.com
Your thoughts and feedback would be great - newsite@gapyear.com
 Name: James Prince Age: 25 Occupation: Just returned careergapper! Hi James! So, tell us about your former life as a web developer. Did you find your job satisfying? To a certain extent I did enjoy developing websites and loved seeing an end product but it meant sitting in front of a computer all day and shutting myself off from people just to concentrate! Towards the end I was feeling dissatisfied; I felt like I needed to get out of there and try something different or entirely new. How did you feel when you were made redundant? Relief! I certainly wasn’t disappointed! I had been planning to leave at some point and do some travelling, and the redundancy made the decision for me. The redundancy payment at the end was a bonus I never expected to get had I just handed in my notice. So, you finally decided to go to Oz for a year. Why did you want to do this? I’d had the dream of going to Australia for a few years by this point, and hearing others’ stories when they returned from their travels just made me long to go there. I guess I wanted to go and see what the fascination was about and just experience a year away from England to live an entirely different life. What preparations did you need to make before you could go? As I lived at home with my parents everything was very easy to sort out; my money had been saved up over the past year, all I had to do was sell my car, cancel the mobile phone contract and go!  So, tell us briefly what you got up to in Oz... Well, our main priority was to buy a car and drive round the country; as there were two of us travelling together it was the most economical way of seeing the whole country. We started in Melbourne and headed west for one giant 35,000km lap of the country taking in some of the most awesome sights and places. We practically did everything we could’ve done with the time we had available. We went round with the ‘if we don’t do this we’ll regret it’ attitude; it gets expensive but it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience! What are your three best memories from your time in Australia? I have so many best memories picking three of them is actually quite difficult! Tasmania holds a special place in my heart. Four of us from our hostel in Melbourne decided to go to Tassie and hire a tiny campervan (suitable for two adults and two children) for 10 days and drive round the state. It was awesome! Tassie is commercially unspoilt. This really appealed to me as did the rolling countryside and beautiful scenery which totally blew me away. I think Tassie is often overlooked as it’s not on the mainland - that may be a good thing as makes the place the way it is!  The Australian Outback took my breath away. People say it’s vast but it’s not until you drive through it for days without seeing anything but bush, sand and kangaroos that you realise just what vast actually means. Even though there is nothing or very little to see it feels like the true Australia and you can’t help but like it, especially when the sun goes down and the awesome array of stars comes out.Then there were the people, not just backpackers we met along the way, but the Australians in Western Australia! Because we drove the country we had to stop for fuel and camp, and every time we stopped we met Aussies on the road towing their huge caravans or campers and they were always happy to stop, talk and advise us. One couple we met on the Nullarbor were kind enough to give us their address in Perth and told us to come round when we arrived and have a true Aussie BBQ. We did and ended up meeting the rest of the family and staying for nearly two weeks - true Aussie hospitality! Then there’s diving with sharks, Whitsunday sailing, Fraser Island... see, three best memories is just too hard! How did you feel about coming home after your year away? Did you look forward to it? We were always sitting in the car and saying things like, 'You know, we’ve got three months left in Australia'. It was the worst thing about travelling, the thought that we had to go home! The final weeks were hard, having to sell the car and leave the lifestyle we had become accustomed to (Melbourne... beer and non-stop partying!). The whole thought of leaving Australia just saddened me though I knew getting home and seeing friends and family would be something to look forward to. So, what was it like to finally get home? Great, I had forgotten what it was like to have a double bed in your own room and a kitchen that isn’t in a mess or full of backpackers! However, after spending a week or two back in England I was soon boring people with my stories and realising absolutely nothing at home had changed. What do you think you will do next? How has your gap year affected you and your hopes for the future and for your career? Now I’m home I need to find a job to start putting some money back into the bank account! Seriously though, I would like to change the direction of my career as I don’t feel I can face another 30 years of my life sitting in front of a computer screen. In the long term I think I would really like to get into the travel industry but short term I think it will be a case of earning enough money to disappear off to Thailand, New Zealand and Canada for a few years to see if I can get rid of this travel bug! As a person it has definitely changed my outlook on life and opened my mind up, and I feel my confidence and personality have improved because of the trip. Are you glad you took a gap year? Or has it just led you to feel dissatisfied with how your life was before? Oh yes, so glad! It does make you realise what you have been missing and that there is a whole world out there to be explored. I came home thinking ‘wow, I can’t believe what I’ve just done and what I achieved’.  Finally, got any advice for people thinking of taking a careergap? All I can say is this... why are you still thinking about it? Go for it, you have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain! Don’t think because you’re no longer an 18-year-old you can’t take a few weeks or a year to go travelling. There are loads of over-25s doing it and they’re likely to get an entirely different experience from the 18-year-olds. I, like most other older backpackers, wish I had done it sooner and stopped just thinking about it!  Click here >> for more Australia info |
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