How to make an academic break work in your favour

Lauren Dowell is an MA Religious Studies student at Lancaster University. In her guest post today, she offers insight and advice about taking a break from the university setting, and why it might be a beneficial decision to make before entering postgraduate studies. Follow Lauren on Twitter at: @laurendowella

Throughout my undergraduate study, I always knew that I wanted to pursue a career in academia. But I also knew that I wanted to take a break from the academic world after my degree; to travel, gain new experiences and to make sure that I’d chosen to pursue the right subject area for me. There was disparity among fellow students and academics about whether taking a break was the right thing to do – “You’ll forget how to write,” they said, “You’ll get a taste for earning a full-time wage and you won’t want to return to being a student,” they said. But both of these claims, alongside the array of negativity about how ‘gap years’ are ineffective and damaging, were hugely disproven. If anything, taking a couple of years out has made me more passionate about my subject area, with stronger writing skills and a breadth of knowledge that I would not have gained from being contained within a university department.

With that said, I’ve spent the past two years trying to build up my skills and take on new challenges, and recommend doing the same if you plan on taking some time out of the academic sphere. Below, I’ve listed my top 5 tips for getting the most out of a year out. But while these have worked for me, I’m sure that others have used their time differently and had equally rewarding and beneficial experiences. Each individual person will know what they’re hoping to get out of an academic break, but I’d like to share my experiences with you, and let you know about some great websites and activities to keep you engaged with your academic self.

My top 5 tips for making the most of a year out:

Stay engaged with your subject area

Although this seems blatantly obvious, it’s easy to forget to stay engaged with your subject matter. If you have any intention of returning to the same area, I think that it’s vitally important to keep up to date on current issues. In all honesty, there have been weeks and probably months where I was disengaged from my subject matter – when you’re working, volunteering or literally just getting on with life, it can be easy to push engagement to the back of your mind and tell yourself that you’ll look into current affairs tomorrow. What I found a really helpful tool for staying engaged was the Guardian’s mobile app. Not only can you customise the app so that subject areas of your choice appear on the home screen, you can also set alerts for articles and writers with specific tags and topics – then it’s as simple as clicking on an alert when it pops up on your phone and having a quick scan of the content. Boom.

Explore new subject areas

For me, this was a must. My undergraduate degree was in Religious Studies, and as much as I loved the area, I really wanted to learn more about human rights, international development and the charity sector before deciding which subject to pursue at postgraduate level. I did this through a combination of volunteering and online courses. Coursera and Future Learn are both great websites which offer both introductory and more advanced courses on an array of topics – Through Coursera, I worked through a free course on Global Diplomacy, facilitated by SOAS, and with Future Learn I looked into Religion and Violence, delivered by the University of Groningen. I also took on a paid course, Charity Apprentice, for a greater insight into the politics of the charity sector and to gain some on-the-ground experience of running fundraising events. Although I haven’t entered into a career in charity work, my experiences and additional learning are shaping research which I am now carrying out in my postgraduate study.

Keep on writing

Again, this is an easy one to overlook, and perhaps not as easy to stay on track with. I was lucky enough to land a volunteering role as a content writer with a community based organisation, Community Highlight, and to contribute to blogs during an administrative job role. I’d encourage anyone to seek out such opportunities, or even to start up your own blog, just to keep your writing flowing and to avoid a huge case of writer’s block when you return to university and have to sit down to your first five-thousand-word essay.

Experience a new culture

If you’re planning on working full time to save money towards your course fees, this could be tricky. But as cliché as this suggestion is, living in a foreign culture will teach you things that you couldn’t really learn anywhere else – how to overcome cultural differences, how to communicate despite language barriers and huge disparities in opinion, how so many things are taken for granted in life, and how there’s always a plan B when things go horrifically wrong. I highly recommend the ICS Scheme (a government-funded 3-month volunteering placement overseas) for gaining this insight, and for giving a little something back to the world. I spent three months working in Bolivia on a human rights programme, and am completely indebted to the charity (International Service) and the organisation for the experience that they provided me with. If you’re unable to go overseas, join a new club or take up a new hobby in your spare time – every group has their own culture, and understanding how and why people function as they do is just as informative.

Work in customer service or retail

There is no better way to improve your communication skills, and to learn about what makes people tick, than working in a customer-facing role. Even though the pay is often unreasonable, and the hours are often unsociable, retail and customer service provide an opportunity to learn how to converse, please, and deal with people in a range of circumstance – both with customers, and fellow team-members. My time working with NEXT and Barnardo’s Retail were completely invaluable, and have provided me with tonnes of communicative experience and teamwork skills. These skills are essential during your postgraduate career, for working on group presentations, speaking publically and pitching research ideas. Working and communicating with people boosts communicative confidence, and this can be applied to postgraduate study threefold.

So if you’re thinking about taking a break from academia, I’d say do it. You’re not leaving the path and you’re not selling yourself short. You’re taking some time for yourself and your personal development, and if you use your time wisely, you’ll come away for that break as a more insightful person than you were before. If you’re passionate and driven, then you know that you’re going to return for postgraduate study, so give yourself some time to check out of the academic sphere and into a new space – there’s always another September around the corner, and you can have your Masters application in with plenty of time to spare, and with plenty of time to learn about yourself and about wider society. I guarantee that you’ll enter back into academia more focused, more motivated, and more perceptive than you were before.