A gap year may sometimes prove beneficial for people. Former students, like me, caught up in the hustle and bustle of school life, never quite understood the mechanics of the working world. Students, as some wise guy said in a newspaper article, are an idealistic bunch, always brimming with ideas and notions to do great stuff and bring about a change for the betterment of humanity.
Never had I thought about HOW the process is going to be like, always WHAT it will be. It takes someone who have had done paid work to understand it. I am fortunate for having been posted to a vocation where I can have a broad picture of how a complex organisation works. When I was a chao recruit, I thought my sergeants had all the answers to our queries, and that the officer is never wrong. After working and dealing with people from various units and departments, I now know that those sgts and officers know peanuts about the organisation. They live their lives as the kings of the northern island off singapore, after freshly graduating from their command courses.
A course, alas, is where the students are imbued with the ideas and skills that the higher authority wants them to learn. To me, they will just be pre-programmed robots that teach the recruits what they have learnt. It's like when we were young, we thought our teachers knew everything. Indeed, they are experts in their areas of specialties, but ask a math teacher with regards to a topic which we come across everyday but not in their course of work, such as how does the school function daily, and they may not be able to utter a decent definition.
When we are in a system that we thought we know, chances are, we may not really understand it at all. Which is why, there is no single person who knows everything in the S@F. Even the cdf won't know how many FFIs there are, even though he would have had to go through dozens of them during his course of duty.
Which brings me back to the main topic of having a gap year. Getting a broader picture of the situation can be very useful in determining your future path. At the age of 17/18, what you will study in higher education is either what your parents want you to study, or what your teachers and peers say is good or bad. A recent episode in the re-run Growing Up series sums it up; The world is not what you think it is when you were in school. (Episode where Tammy interns at a law firm)