Traveling is becoming one of those ‘must-have’ activities on graduating students C V. Why? Because traveling is a rewarding, memorable and exciting ‘adventure’ that anyone can do!

Everyone loves a good weekend break or week long trip, however year-long ‘gap years’ are becoming the ‘norm’ for students attending good universities in the UK and USA, and some feel that actually NOT having gone on a gap year may start to be detrimental to your employability.

Is there any truth to this worry? Should we all be sending our children off to Africa, Europe or Asia for a year to simply improve the overall usefulness of their leadership degree? This is what we will investigate in this article.

The Debate

The key criteria that will decide a traveling excursions effectiveness in improving your education and CV are the following:

1.Cost

2.Variety of activities

3.Skills learnt

4.Experiences & memories gained

5.Safety

1. Cost of a Gap Year or Vacation

Costs run very high for trips of these type. Especially when you consider that degree students aren’t exactly in a wealthy position – this can literally make or break a good trip. I have heard of individuals ammassing up to $10,000 in extra debts for a single year trip to countries that we would consider as being very cheap places to live in. Sure, this was good value for an entire year-long trip, but just because you get a lot of bang for you buck, doesn’t mean that paying the whole amount is the right decision.

2. Variety of Activities

Is your gap year going to be a booze cruise? A religious mission? A round-the-world voyage? A charity-based year? A working vacation?

Leadership Degree students tend to actually gravitate towards gap years that involve some form of structured activity. In this way, you can ensure that the holiday involves constructive activities that will allow you to gain new skills. A simple ‘sight seeing’ holiday with friends may make you a more worldly person and more knowledgeable about travel customs, but may actually cause you to miss out on experiencing the real culture of these destinations that may otherwise have been undiscovered by the normal tourist.

3. Skills Learnt

Skills learnt from a work-based job would surely be much higher than on a tourist trip right? True, but not always. Remember, much of the nature of work in foreign ‘work abroad’ trips can be monotonous and unhelpful for your career. Waitressing in a foreign country is often a good way to pick up the language, but will not offer you much in the way of other skills such as technical ability, physical fitness, personal development, professionalism etc. Its important to always be thinking, ‘What ‘TYPE’ of experience would I be getting from this?’

4.Experiences and Memories Gained

One would imagine that simply going to exotic places will guarantee a tonne of priceless memories. This is not always the case. You could send two students from leadership degrees into an identical hostel in an identical country for the same period of time, but yet they will come back with vastly different experiences. The key to being the one who came back with the most, is to be friendly and say hi to everyone. Opportunities and friends will only present themselves if you go about seeking them in a proactive and ‘Wide-eyed’ way. Simply hoping that an adventure will happen while you’re reading a book on a beach is not the most effective strategy.

5. Safety

Safety is absolute paramount when travelling abroad. Lets face it; leadership degree students from university are not going to have the sharpest eye for a dangerous situation, compared to an experienced traveller. We all know that learning from mistakes is a good way to learn – but learning from other peoples mistakes so that you don’t have to make them yourself is certainly the best way to go about it.

Visit travel forums, the travel office on your government website online, and talk with people who have already traveled to learn tips about how vary you need to be of pickpockets, which areas to avoid at night, and what form of cash/cards are the most appropriate to take. This information is not normally forthcoming on the holiday brochures, so do the research yourself!

Author Bio: Simon Oates provides travel advice for students on leadership degrees or those in foreign countries learning via online leadership degrees – helping them get the most out of their trip.

Category: Travel
Keywords: Travel, Holidays, Gap Years, Work Abroad, Travel Advice, Safety on Holiday, Leadership, Degrees,