Teen Spirit is in that summer-after-high-school time of life, an
interesting limbo between the end of one experience and the beginning
of another. And it is fraught with excitement, expectation and, this
being Smartmom talking here, anxiety.

The anxiety comes because Teen Spirit is taking what is now called a
“gap year” (which was called “taking a year off” when Smartmom was in
college, but now it has an official name and almost no stigma at all).

At first, Smartmom wondered if it would be awkward when people asked
what her son is doing in the fall. Now she just says, “He’s going to
‘Gap Year University,’” and that usually shuts them up.

More often than not, people seem to love the idea. Quite a few have
said some version of, “I wish I’d done that rather than flounder my way
through my first year at college.”

Back in her day, Smartmom knew a few kids who did interesting things
on their year off before college. One friend lived on a kibbutz,
another went sailing around the world. Still another was an intern at a
documentary film company.

It seemed very brave to Smartmom at the time and it wasn’t something
she ever considered for herself. She wasn’t really the independent,
design-your-own-major type of person back then. She did what she was
supposed to do and left it at that.

Smartmom remembers her summer between high school and college. She
worked at an insurance company where she filed, typed and answered
phones. The boredom was excruciating, but Smartmom enjoyed her lunch
hours at the Great American Health Bar on West 57th Street and the
paychecks on Fridays.

She especially loved quitting time, when she could go home and be
with her high school friends, especially her boyfriend. They’d already
decided that they were “breaking up” for college. Still, they savored
the last months of their relationship and went to concerts in Central
Park, movies at the Elgin and bars on Columbus Avenue.

At the end of August, she was thrilled to say good-bye to the tedium
of an office job. She packed a big trunk, bid farewell to her boyfriend
and her beloved high school friends and journeyed to SUNY-Binghamton on
the southern tier.

Orientation was really scary and she figured she’d probably made a
huge mistake by going to a huge state school in a strange upstate city.
But within a few days, she had a new best friend and a whole gaggle of
interesting people she was becoming attached to.

In other words, Smartmom survived the transition and successfully reinvented herself as a college freshman.

Smartmom wonders how Teen Spirit feels watching his friends go off
to college. Last week one friend left for the Art Institute of Chicago
while others are off to Brown University, Reed, Lewis and Clark, and
Grinnell.

Luckily, one of Teen Spirit’s best friends is also attending “Gap
Year University” and that is a real source of comfort for Smartmom.
They tend to be very creative and constructive together and Smartmom
has a hunch that they’ll be an inseparable duo in the year to come.

Teen Spirit has two friends who took a gap year last year. One of
them got his own apartment and worked at an office job at a small firm
in Manhattan. The other boy taught English in South America. After a
year of working and traveling, they both feel ready and very motivated
to go to college.

That’s the Gap Year University success story. Smartmom’s big fear is
that Teen Spirit won’t ever want to go to college after his stint at
GYU — and that’s why a lot of parents don’t like the gap year idea in
the first place.

But Smartmom believes that it really is, probably, the best thing
for the iconoclastic Teen Spirit. It will give him a chance to work, to
travel and to play music, which is something he’s really passionate
about.

It will also be an opportunity for him to do something other than
school, which he’s done for most of his life. He seems eager to exist
outside of that structure for a while, and Smartmom has a hunch that
this will be a liberating way for him to reinvent himself a little bit
and find out what makes him tick.

Trouble is, it’s hard to tell when the program at Gap Year
University actually begins. There are no schedules, no course catalogs
and no freshman advisers. It’s all a little free form and very open
ended. But that, Smartmom tries to remind herself, is the whole point.

She just hopes his grades are good.