Katie Stewart graduated high school during the first few months of the pandemic, and instead of going to college in the fall she decided to take a gap year and find a job.
In high school, Katie was a very active member of her community. She participated in choir, her school’s environmental club, National Honor Society, and her church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). She gained leadership skills and event building experience through choir, and earned many volunteer hours through the environmental club and National Honor Society. In her senior year of high school, she was nervous but excited to go college. She did not consider taking a gap year.
At the end of her senior year, COVID spread to the U.S. and everything shut down. Katie felt lucky because her parents were able to keep their jobs, and she did not lose anyone she was close to. However, like us all, Katie found the unexpectedness of the pandemic difficult. Her choir was getting ready and fundraising for a tour in Hawaii, which was canceled when schools were shut down. The hardest part for her was never getting to say goodbye to her friends from high school. Her graduation was over Zoom, and most of her friends left for college before she got a chance to see them again. Katie has been able to keep in touch with some of her friends from high school, however now that it's safe many people have moved on with their lives, because it has been so long. This was especially difficult with her choir community, because it was such a big group there were many people she never saw again. That phase of life closed without saying goodbye and it will never be the same again.
Originally during the pandemic, Katie was still planning on going to college in the fall of 2020. She committed to Whitman College, paid the deposit and signed up for classes. After graduation, she took a plane for the first time since lockdown to stay with her aunt and help with her young children. While she was there, Whitman College stated that students could be on campus in the fall but all classes would be online. After talking with her aunt, Katie decided that if she was not going to be able to have in-person classes and socialize with her peers, then she did not want to start college. The social aspect of college is very important to her, college is a specific time of life that she did not want to lose. Whitman’s expensive tuition was another contributing factor to her decision to defer her enrollment and take a gap year.
During her gap year, Katie decided to find a job and take some classes at a community college. Katie took classes that were interesting and helpful to her current life. She found work nannying for a few different families, and tutoring a small group of eighth graders to help them with their online school. During a transition phase between nannying jobs, Katie assisted a member of her church who needed help because she suffered from a concussion. She nannied a family full time (40 hours a week), from when the baby was five months to 14 months old. Her work felt meaningful, because her tutees needed extra guidance in their online school, and through nannying she got to know the family really well and she still babysits for them while she is home from college.
Looking back, Katie feels like taking a gap year was definitely the right decision for her. She learned things she would not have learned if she went to college right away, such as how to work a 40-hour week, pay taxes, and set appointments. From tutoring, Katie learned that she is a good communicator and is good at explaining things in a one-on-one setting. Today, Katie has a job tutoring other students at Whitman. From both nannying and tutoring, Katie learned that she wants to work with children in psychology.
Katie Stewart is a Junior Psychology major at Whitman College. She loves singing in choir, reading, spending time with friends, and playing with babies. She hopes to use her psychology degree in a field that helps people, whether it be as a communicator between groups, researcher, therapist, or more.
