Post #1

Well, well, well.

Here we are, folks. The date is July 7th, 2012, which means that Liz and I will be embarking on our gap year in exactly 57 days. Time to start up the ole blog! 

I guess it would be appropriate for the first post to include our personal origin story. It all began on the Tufts University email server, where we found out that we were to be roommates for the 2011-2012 school year. Nothing monumental happened in this stage of being cyber acquaintances, except for an agreement that a certain rug would decorate our dorm room. 

Aw. So cute. 

In late August we met in person for the first time. Please see photo evidence to the left. I got to the room first. I had one suitcase and two bags. Liz rolled up a few minutes later with a giant green rug, a green chair, a green lamp, (a green refrigerator later on), and around 47 boxes of clothing, including one roll-away dedicated entirely to scarves. Hopefully she packs lighter on backpacking excursions that she does during college move-in - fingers crossed, everyone!

The rest of our freshman year was a blur of binge drinking, frat parties, and experimentation with psychedelic drugs. Just kidding. Only the first two. We also studied and ate Hodgdon food. 

In all seriousness, I think we both agree that we had the year every college freshman hopes for. We worked hard and played hard. There were bad times and good times. We made  the best of friends and had the classiest gatherings possible in a 14x14 dorm room. 

So why leave? Valid question, seeing as we're happy Bostonians studying mechanical engineering (Liz) and english/gender studies (Alexis). We discussed this very question one late night in February, a conversation that snowballed into our current journey. Don't mind if I rattle off a few highlights from our talk... 

• We were both extremely burnt out academically. Straight to college after high school is a marathon, and second semester we were hitting a wall. 
• Second, after four+ years of striving towards the ultimate goal - to get into a good college - we succeeded. And now we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We needed a fresh motivation, vision, and drive. 
• We didn't want to spend 3 more years (and 150,000 more dollars) studying subjects that we hadn't had time to fully process and imagine ourselves working with. Sometimes, you need to take a step back in order to digest your future. 
• We were realizing that we did not want to participate in the high school to college to work force norm that eliminated valuable life choices from the spectrum. 
• We couldn't bear putting off some serious travel any longer.

These and other reasons made taking a year off make the most sense, although it remains the craziest thing we've ever done. Click here to have the value of a gap year echoed by someone older and wiser in case you're still skeptical. 

That's about enough for a first post, I'd say! To anyone reading this, Liz and I sincerely thank you for reading and caring about our voyage. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or if you would like to meet up abroad, or if you are interested in helping us out along the way, please don't hesitate to get in touch! 

Peace, 

Best, 

Alexis