The Gap Year Effect: Reflections on My First Semester Back
Unparalleled Compassion and Unmatched Intensity
How flustering it is to oscillate between:
Dissatisfaction with my setting; Professors that don’t care, students who don’t want to be there, advisors calling me over-ambitious
Pleasant conversations about my Professors journey to being a teacher in America, my peers sharing the story of how much they’ve improved from their old selves and circumstances
Desiring to join a Research lab → Having to run from lab to lab to do experiments/trials
Though the semester is not over, it’s just finals left, so it’s done in my mind.
If you were to have told me how this semester would’ve played out when:
I was a senior in HS, I would’ve laughed at the fact that I was at Brooklyn College.
During my gap year, I would’ve been offended by the idea of you saying I wasn’t pleased with my circumstances
Before the semester, I would’ve been eternally grateful for the opportunities I was blessed with
Mid Semester, I would’ve been shocked I made it through and did well
Now, my brain is still rocked at the idea that things played out the way they did
Key Moments
My semester was unique. I don’t say that because I am a special, hard-working, good boy who wants the best for everyone, rather, I asked my old friends about their experience, and it was a route unlike the one I trekked.
Got into a paid NIH NIH-funded fellowship. Yea boy! I did a coding boot camp, research experience thing, blah blah blah; the main thing was that it helped open the door for the next thing.
Became a Research Assistant in a Nutrition Lab at my College, and a Neuroscience Lab at another College. It is an amazing feeling to be a part of the research in 2 of your favorite fields (obesity ~ autism).
Worked as an SHSAT teacher for low-income students. It’s fulfilling to be able to teach students who were in my position and teach with a level of passion that I so deeply craved.
Went to Arizone for a Medical Conference. I was blessed with the opportunity to go to ABRCMS with a group from my school.
Took part in a data science fellowship with NBCUniversal and America on Tech. This was an amazing & rigorous program that acted as a bridge between the immense theory I learned on my own, and the vast applications it has in the field of data science & AI.
Became the President of the CRU Christian Clubs in Brooklyn. As a man of Faith, this was undeniably the most fulfilling & meaningful opportunity I was blessed with over the past few months.
Harvard Hackathon. Took the L, but it was fun. Off 3 hours of sleep over 2 days.
Cultivated an ever-growing level of compassion & love for my peers at Brooklyn College. I will write about this later on (in this piece or another), but I was completely oblivious to the bubble that going to a Specialized High School puts you in. Quitting at Brooklyn Tech was taking Calc instead of AP Calc… I have come to realize that is not how the real world is. I was disappointed in how this realization initially processed within me at first, but it has been redeemed.
Published an AI Article in an Engineering Journal with Professors! I couldn’t be any more grateful towards Prof & Executive Dean Saurabh Sinha from the University of Canterbury. I will undoubtedly have to give him his own piece, but for now I’ll give a brief rundown. In the midst of a Gap Year, at a time where Princeton felt like a dream, I wrote a piece on AI that they touched on. To my surprise a visiting Prof actually responded, we met up, and over the past few months wrote an Article on AI ~ Education.
Started exploring a whole new world of Science, Research, Engineering, and Health! Academics are one thing, and learning is another, though they greatly overlap, they are similar not the same. I am grateful to have had supplementary learnings to my academics that were more tailored to my interests while having tangible majors/careers/opportunities associated with it.
If any of these opportunities are something you are seeking to take part in at your respective college, please DM me! I’d love to help share tips on the process of taking part in these. My insta is ethan.a.castro my email is theethancastro at gmail.com.
Top Lessons Learned
You don’t have to be going full speed all the time.
My lowest moments this semester were caused by my overly ambitious nature + self-nurture (watching too many war clips, reading to many biographies, and so on), and trying to emulate those who were not in my position.
You don’t have to love it.
My expectation going into college wasn’t that the college would be great, but that my perception, due to the contrast of a boring gap year, would be that college is heaven. When it didn’t reach my expectations, I dropped down to the level I perceived it as.
You are you, they are them. Though they have seen many like you, they have never seen you. Don’t listen to everything, don’t ignore anything.
I was advised against nearly everything I did. Understandably so, my advisors/prof/peers have never met someone in my circumstances. But I could not ignore them due to the fact that I, have never seen how I would operate in these foreign circumstances.
You won’t learn everything through reading.
Yea yea yea, you don’t know what people are going through. You don’t know how they came up. You don’t know what barriers stood in their way. This program seems pointless. But it is true. Being in new environments really gives you an understanding of the idea of Chesterston’s Fence.
Chesterton's Fence is a principle that says change should not be made until the reasoning behind the current state of affairs is understood. It says the rash move, upon coming across a fence, would be to tear it down without understanding why it was put up.
