Hi there! I'm May and I'm sooo excited to share my Dartmouth experience with you! I love basically all types of food, binge watching Asian shows, and cozy movie nights! Find me in gym playing badminton, with my friends in the common rooms, getting coffee at Collis (my favorite), or volunteering at local service projects!
Academic Program
Quantitative Social Science
Favorite Thing Right Now
Finally having Stir-fry from Collis after a looong year...
How I spent my gap year (and why YOU should take one)!
High school juniors and seniors, as college application season approaches, you probably will have a lot of things on your mind.
Scheduling dates for your standardized tests.
Asking for recommendations.
Mapping out essays.
Making a list of potential universities.
Occupied with all this, you might overlook the option of a gap year. This is where you take a year — or more, depending on what you choose to do — to pursue an interest or a curiosity before you enroll in college.
Quite daunting, isn't it?
My high school graduation in May of 2018 in Yangon, Myanmar!
At least that was how I found it when I chose to take one after graduation. No one I knew had taken a gap year before. And especially back home in Myanmar, there was some sort of stigma around gap years.
"It's a year wasted."
Not if you're focusing on your mental growth and taking up an interest.
"It's for people who're not ready for college."
You're only 17, 18 years old; it's only natural to feel this way.
I, for one, needed to take a step back and take a good look at what I wanted to do before college. Some family health concerns also surfaced. But for once, there were no rules or restrictions from high school. No due dates, stress over examinations, all-nighters. The whole world seemed to lie in front of me, ready for my taking.
A sea of students gather around to end the day in Kachin State, Myanmar
I've always been interested in global health so I started by searching up some local organizations, asking for an opportunity to volunteer or intern. I was just a high school graduate but I learned that an honest voice and enthusiasm gets you a long way! I was able to join a short-term project at Helen Keller International, an organization working to prevent blindness and malnutrition. I started volunteering at a monastic school, two cities away from the one I called home, to help students prepare for university examinations.
Being the youngest and least-experienced on the team, I was full of jitters. This was the actual real world now! But then, I had to remind myself that I just can't expect myself to avoid making mistakes. Even if I do, I had to learn to take it with a grain of salt and get back up on my feet. This is the kind of realization that really impresses on you beyond the walls of a classroom.
My adorable-but immensely playful-group of 2nd graders whom I miss!
With my team — who became great mentors for me — I travelled around Myanmar to several villages and worked at schools to provide health services for students. Even as a proud Burmese, these were places which I have never heard of and people from ethnicities which I've never known. It was sincerely eye-opening. Living at the monastic school for 2 months, I was inspired by how so many youth in under-developed nations like my own have so much thirst and passion for change.
The lessons I will take away from my gap year extend far beyond learning what 6/18 vision means or how to deal with a classroom of forty 6th graders. Meeting true professionals and working with actual peopleand problems, I was once again brought out of my own little bubble that I knew was "high school." I questioned who I thought I was and how I worked best outside school. Simply put, I learned to define my value, not just as a student, a health worker or a teacher, but as a human being.
The people I have met at Dartmouth who have become my dearest of friends :)
The people I have met, each with a unique story and purpose, helped me rekindle a natural intellectual curiosity which I felt like I lost in the thick of senior year. Thinking back, I would have gotten lost in college, unsatisfied at what the world had to offer and constantly asking myself: then what? After late-night projects and coffee, then what? After success stories and a degree, then what? Now that I'm in my college dorm, typing away these letters with a much more sound understanding of who I am, I'm actually excited for the many more 'then whats' that await for me.
It's easy to forget how easy it is to access walking trails during the hustle of a Dartmouth term. As graduation nears, I am reminded of how special it is to step off campus and enjoy quiet moments in nature.
With a solar eclipse sweeping across North America for the first time in nearly seven years on April 8th came a road-trip with hundreds of other Dartmouth students to a zone of totality near campus: St. Johnsbury, Vermont!
Over half of Dartmouth students study abroad at least once during their undergraduate journeys—quite a high percentage, right? Do you want to know how to best prepare for your own abroad experience? Come check what it was like for me.
