Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamnothere | Hacker News Reader

We need to normalize a gap year, or at least a gap semester. Young adults need a break after the pressure of graduation and college admissions, and whether it’s work or travel, some perspective helps ground the college experience and make it a choice instead of an obligation.

In my experience, many freshmen treated their first year as a gap year anyways, especially if they took difficult senior classes. First year classes aren’t always as rigorous as good AP classes (depending on both the high school and the university), so you can skip or cram while partying.

View on HN

I wish the US had mandatory conscription. Not necessarily military conscription, but kind of like the German model where you either do military service or public service (if I remember correctly).

I sure could have used the maturity, the money, and the time when I was younger. I learned the hard way that attending college when you have no idea what you want to do only delays your graduation date (major change absolutely fucked me).

The issue is that these conscriptions are rarely for the benefit of the person and are usually for the benefit of the nation. They are usually cheap labour or just bodies to put where you need a physical presence but no real skill. If the conscription paid the appropriate wage for the role, absolutely that would be a great idea and help those who were coming out of difficult situations such as foster and poor home life too.

> The issue is that these conscriptions are rarely for the benefit of the person

Issue? That's the best part.

> They are usually cheap labour or just bodies to put where you need a physical presence but no real skill.

That rhymes with many jobs and services people perform.

> If the conscription paid the appropriate wage for the role, absolutely that would be a great idea and help those who were coming out of difficult situations such as foster and poor home life too.

That would be one contingency, yes. In my fantasy, there would also be free healthcare and public, secondary education for any and all the performed military or civil service. In fact, I would even advocate for fast-tracking immigration and citizenship in a similar manner.

My state sort of has a similar policy. Any adult 18 years or older without a secondary education degree can attend community college for free. However, some n number of hours of mandatory community service is required every semester in order to receive the benefit.

So because you personally needed extra time to mature, you want to force a nationwide measure to force everyone to do the same? No one is stopping anyone from taking a year off before applying to college.

No, I want to force a nationwide measure for conscription or civil service. The bit about my benefit was to merely illustrate why I find the idea appealing. It was never meant to serve as a sufficient argument.

The reasons I would support such a policy would be difficult to describe in a terse manner. My one-liner justification is that such a policy would be have to be transactional. Citizens serve their nation and their nation servers its citizens -- far from what we currently have.

Good Idea.

Force young people to work with and get to know people from other backgrounds.

A gap year, no grades and claiming some kind of disability (30-45% of students were noted to game the system this way in some colleges) would do marvels, I'm sure. The only part that is missing is religion. Oh wait, Catholicism is now on the rise in the relevant age groups. Oopsie Protestant America.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com