Many young people choose to take a year off between finishing school and starting university in order to gain work experience or to travel. The experience of non-academic life this offers, benefits the individual upon returning to formal education. To what extent do you agree or disagree? I completely agree with the idea of spending time away from studies, traveling or working before starting university, as a way to gain life experience and to become a more mature person. Experiencing different kinds of work and travelling to different cities or countries gives young people a wide view of real life by putting them in contact with older people and understanding the issues they confront. For example, working in an NGO can definitely give them a wholly new perspective on the issues that other societies are facing. It would be useful for society as a whole that this new generation, rather than just accumulating pure academic facts, be equipped with this kind of practical knowledge to help them to better empathize with these struggles and to find ways of solving them throughout their academic lives. Getting to know other people while traveling is also a perfect way to switch a self-centered world vision, which is a common flaw in young people, to one in which they can appreciate society as a whole and the role they are playing within it. It also has to be said that many young people do not have a clear view about what kind of profession they are going to be studying towards, and with this in mind, it would be quite useful to have some work experience before making a definite decision about their own futures. We, as society, gain with this practice, due to having both more empathetic people and better students with factual knowledge about issues throughout society.