Nearly three years after my own matriculation, I have come to the end of my year abroad in Germany. It has been a great experience on a personal level: I have really enjoyed having a year out from academic work and having the freedom to do a nine-month work placement, forcing me to begin thinking about life after university. In a strange way, I have also missed Cambridge and I look forward to returning with renewed enthusiasm next October.

But before I go home, I have dragged all my things to Paris to spend the week with my brother. In many ways, we have led parallel lives in neighbouring countries this year. What I did may be called a year abroad and what he has done is called a gap year, but we have both spent a while abroad improving our language skills while keeping a roof over our heads.

“My brother will begin his degree with a clear idea of what he wants to get out of his time in Cambridge.”

However, today gap years come with a stereotype and stigma, primarily influenced by the video ‘Gap Yah’. The image it gives of a posh gap year student travelling the world to party under the pretence of finding himself went viral around the time I was picking my GCSE courses. The video certainly shows one side of the gap year argument, painting gap year kids as privileged and thoughtless. It shows a year out of education as no more than a meaningless waste of time. I never personally considered taking a gap year until it was too late and I had accepted my place at Cambridge and even then, it was never a serious thought. But over the past year I have had the pleasure of watching my younger, but wiser, brother refute the stereotype and really develop and mature while having a gap year without a Peruvian mountain or a party in Burma in sight.

Aged 18, it seemed to me that taking a year out of education was an unnecessary luxury. Knowing that, as an MMLer, I would have to spend a year abroad anyway extending my degree by a year, a gap year seemed superfluous. I applied to study German and Russian because the course looked interesting but, fresh from school, I had hardy given the rest of university life a second thought. Spending freshers’ week juggling meetings at Sidgwick, talks in college and catching-up from arriving a day late, I missed the Freshers’ Fair, unaware that the university clubs and societies that I would later stumble across would be what defined the end of my first year and my entire second year at Cambridge.

In comparison, my brother, regretting not having done French A-level, spent half a year working as a swimming instructor to fund language lessons, and is now spending the second half working in Paris and improving his French. He mostly works as an au pair, which is hardly the most glamorous job you could find in Paris, but it means he spends most of the day looking after kids who don’t speak English. This also keeps a roof over his head and food on the table. Unlike when I arrived in Cambridge, my brother, who will matriculate next year, is now much more confident. He recognises the existence and importance of life beyond his academic education, and, unlike me, aims to make it to the Freshers’ Fair and put this theory into practice.

Refugees resettled: the integration crisis

If I had taken a gap year, I would have finished my degree aged 23, nearly two years after most of my friends. That was, for me, a sufficient deterrent, even without on the cliché of teens hugging African children, building schools in Cambodia or hiking up South American mountains to get “a sense of the awesome power of nature and the insignificance of man.” But a year away from formal education doesn’t need to be a holiday. Taking time to pursue interests, like learning a language, that you wouldn’t otherwise make time for is invaluable preparation for either university or life after education.

After a year of supporting himself and learning for pleasure rather than exams, my brother will begin his degree with a clear idea of what he wants to get out of his time in Cambridge. As for me, I will begin my fourth year with similar eagerness and ambitious plans, but wishing that I had held this perspective three years ago