A Gap Year Makes Sense

Taking a gap year between high school and college, and spending it working or volunteering instead of traveling and partying, is one of the smartest things your teen can do to prepare for the economy of the 21st century. It can also keep him or her from making a big mistake, as this article notes:

Friends Jeremy Bowles and Chris Billups, both 21 and both 2007 graduates of Kearney High School, spent the year after high school working. It might not qualify as a typical gap year, but it produced some revelations just the same.
Both guys were working the fall after their senior year at the Shoal Creek Golf Course near Liberty, Mo., but their plan was to move to Orlando, Fla., the following January to study golf course management at a trade school.....
And as time went on, Billups figured something out. "After working 40 hours a week at a golf course, I changed my mind about what I wanted to do," he says.