The following blog post was written by Global Gap Year Fellow, Amber Grant.
I’m a simple person. I wake up late because I go to bed late. I shop online and I watch TikToks. I hang out with my best friend all the time, I replace meals with a surplus of caffeine, and I’m never home. At the end of August, I watched everyone my age move into their dorms. I was kind of jealous because I also wanted to spend money at Target. Now, I’m thankful to not be in a dorm. Not because of the roommate horror stories I’ve heard and witnessed so far, but because I know I could not handle school right now.
I’ve gotten the same, great grades every year of school. I do this not because I really care, but because I want to be able to do anything I feel like. I’m not one to limit my options. I applied for the fellowship because there was no reason not to. I didn’t even believe I would get into UNC— you bet I filled out any application or survey I saw.
If I went to school right now, I would do the same thing I’ve done for the last four years. I would ask the person next to me for a pencil or paper at least once a week and memorize words just to spit them out and forget them entirely. I want to be engaged in what I’m doing, and I can tell you genuinely that if I went to class this semester and played a first day icebreaker game I would lose my mind.
I know how I can grow this year— and it isn’t by memorizing the key words of any textbook chapter. I turn nineteen at 9:56 PM tonight and I can’t even feed myself. Really, boiling water is a struggle sometimes. In four days, I am going to be on my own for the first time in my life. Now, if I was in a dorm, would I be learning how to cook? Would I be doing anything really meaningful? Would I meet anyone or go anywhere actually interesting? I like that I know that I am doing the right thing for myself. This overwhelming anxiety is kind of nice because I feel like I’m finally acting with passion.
In five days, I will be arriving on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota. Here, the Minneconjou, SiHaSapa, Oohenumpa, and Itazipco bands of the Lakota tribe live. See, now I’m doing something. It doesn’t feel real, but it’s happening. All I can do is be positive about it now.
What if I have a horrible time? I would rather laugh at how horrible it is than sleep in a twin-sized loft bed in a shared dorm room, waiting for five alarms to go off at an ungodly hour. It’s a life I would love to continue next year, but this is a much welcomed pause.