Hi everybody, Mia Ferraina here, back with another session about gap and bridge experiences. If you didn't check out the first video about what a gap or bridge experience is, you might want to rewind and check that one out first. Now we'll be moving on to talking about why you might pursue an opportunity like this, what might make it a good fit for you. So ways that these experiences can be helpful are numerous, and some of these overlap of course, but I would say ways it can be helpful because there is a lot of attention required in planning your gap experience and also, not necessarily all of these reasons are going to apply to everybody, but you can gain a lot of relevant skills and explore possible career paths, so maybe get to try something out, see whether or not you like it. It gives you a little bit of time to manage your applications to additional schooling, so grad school, med school, law school. Sometimes it's a lot to be writing lots of personal statements for those kinds of things as well as, you know, papers and exams for your degree. It can give you a chance to step outside of your comfort zone. If you feel like you've been doing the same thing for a long time and you haven't really pushed yourself to explore something different, sometimes a gap experience can be a great opportunity to try something totally new and really stretch yourself. It can also be an opportunity to take a break if you feel like you've had the pedal to the medal the entire time throughout your undergrad experience, and you just need a second to breathe and relax and focus on yourself and maybe some family concerns before you go back for another degree. This can be a good opportunity to do that as well. It can definitely be a chance to pay off loans. Sometimes people want to pay down their undergrad loans a little bit before they go into graduate school so they don't have as many financial worries, or it might be paying off some loans for your family. Fulfilling a dream is something I guess kind of tied with stepping outside your comfort zone. There is something you've always wanted to try and you've been afraid to do it, or haven't had the opportunity to take, you know, a year-long backpacking trip across, you know I don't know, Africa or something. If you haven't had the chance to take a year off and take a backpacking trip across the country or something like that, this can be a great opportunity, kind of in-between degrees where you don't have a lot of obligations potentially. And last, but not least, a gap year can help increase your marketability. If there are skills that you feel like you still need to develop in order to be successful in your future career, getting a job or participating in a program allows you to develop some of those skills. It can help make you a better qualified candidate for the future. So when we talk about, you know, increasing your marketability or becoming a better candidate, you want to think about these core competencies. And you might say, Mia, what on earth is a competency? I've never heard of this before. Essentially they're basic skills that we as both college advisors as well as employers kind of expect or hope that students will have upon graduation or upon entering the job market. So there's a few different people that put out a list of competencies. We'll talk about a few but there are a lot. NACE as the National Association of Colleges and Employers. So they come up with a fairly broadly applicable list to a lot of different industries. You can see all the different competencies that they have here. There's also a link to a self assessment tool to kind of see where you're at with these different competencies and what areas you might need to develop in your gap experience. If you're someone who is bound for medical school, there are also competencies specific to medical students, so you can see that list here. Again, if you're feeling like you're lacking in one of these areas, taking that gap or bridge experience can help you have an opportunity to develop into a more well rounded applicant for medical school and become more competitive. Like I said, these are just two lists of potential competencies for you to think about. If there's a national organization or professional development conference or something like that for your industry, your field of interest, I encourage you to check out their website and they probably have some sort of list like this, whether they caught competencies or not, there's often a list of like, values of the profession or top 10 most important skills or something like that, so I'd encourage you to check them out for your specific profession and think about if there are areas that you need to improve upon to become a more qualified candidate. So something, you know, that you want to think about kind of holistically, is all these different factors that play into whether or not a gap or bridge experience is going to be a good fit for you. Most importantly, you want to think about what your goals are, you know, kind of thinking back to that slide about reasons why they might be helpful. If your goal is to take a break, make sure you don't overbook yourself. If your goal is to pay off some loans, maybe you need to find something where you can put in a lot of overtime and make a lot of extra money. You know, so you want to make sure that you think about what your goal is in advance, and make sure that your plans align with that goal. So what is interesting and relevant to your goal? Obviously we want to make sure that you at least somewhat enjoy what you're doing, but again keeping the goal in mind, keeping your eyes on the prize is very important. So any of our advisers are happy to talk to you about what might be a good fit for what your future plans are and how to get there. Some other considerations are things like finances and geographic preferences, so maybe you want to be close to family, or maybe you have obligations financially to your family, things like that, you want to make sure that you're keeping in mind when you're choosing where to go and how much you need to make. Other obligations you might need to think about: if you have a certain health need or something like that, where you need to stay close to your doctors or help take care of your younger siblings or something, obviously those are things to consider. Time and benefits are also really  important. So think about how long you have to commit to the experience. Some of the programs that are online range from, you know, a few weeks, a couple months, all the way to multiple years for something like the Peace Corps. Now that doesn't mean that one experience is necessarily better or worse than the other, but you'll want to keep in mind the timeframe when you choose what you would like to do and how long it will be until you start your next degree. You'll also think about health care and benefits, or do you still have health insurance through your family, maybe you need to be on your own for that. In terms of, you know, this last question is a little bit long, but thinking about would you rather spend time alone, with other people, are you someone who likes to kind of do your own thing and figure things out as you go, or do you want to be part of something much more structured. That kind of ties back to what is your goal. If your goal is to do a lot of self exploration and quiet reflection, you probably don't want to be with a group of 25 people doing the same job or internship. And lastly, this is kind of a bonus one, are there any professional development opportunities built into the program. So something like opportunities to meet other employees at the company, workshops maybe to help you work on your resume. Things like that, maybe transition services, in order to, you know, something like the Peace Corps helps you re-assimilate back into the U. S. So things like that are good to consider. Again, not necessarily required, but kind of icing on the cake. So all of these questions are things that you will want to ask yourself, maybe journal about, something you might want to ask an interviewer about if you're not sure whether the experience you're considering will be the right fit for you. Again, I'll always reiterate that there is no one way to do this and you'll want to think about what's best for you, your goals and your circumstances, and our advisors are more than happy to help you make sure that the experiences you're applying to are a good fit for your goals. Or even if you're just not sure what your goal is, we're happy to talk with you, so we'll include the link to book an appointment with us online, so feel free to check that out, as well as some of our other videos.