Gullixson: Let's give college-bound students a break

“Wisdom begins in wonder.”

- Socrates (as shown on Santa Rosa Middle School marquee last week.)

Imagine you and your family are racing to catch a connecting flight at Chicago O'Hare International Airport or Dallas/Fort Worth and your daughter needs to find a restroom and your wife insists on stopping to buy snacks rather than pay the ungodly food prices on board the plane, and you're still trying to zip up your carry-on bag bulging with information about colleges you plan to visit and that large now-unwrapped gift for Aunt Edna in Queens that the TSA folks thought was a machete when your 17-year-old son stops, looks up at the flight information screen and says, “You go on ahead. I'll see you in a year or so. I'm going to Bolivia. Or Stockholm. Or Bruges. I'll be fine.”

That gives you some idea of my reaction when Christopher came to me last fall saying that he wanted to take a different route on his way to college - one that requires a passport. He wanted to apply for the Rotary Youth Exchange program to spend his senior year of high school abroad.

Internally, my reaction was, “What are you talking about?” followed by “What about your ACTs and SATs and AP classes and college tours and your GPA and those summer programs we had talked about?” In the deep recesses of my thoughts, I also was asking, “What about terrorism and ID thefts and the Zika virus? And what about family trips and Christmas and going to Giants games and prom pictures and graduation celebrations and all that other stuff that underwrite that simple truth all moms and dads understand, that the joys of parenthood, particularly in the teen years, make up in height what they lack in length?”

But I somehow managed to avoid overreacting. Instead he, Tamara and I sat down, and we talked and listened and looked into the program for ourselves. In the end, our world shifted on its axis a little. And so, at some point in late July, he will leave to spend a year in Sweden.

I write this because gap-year discussions are in vogue with the news that Malia Obama, the president's older daughter, will be taking a year off before starting her freshman year of college.

Of course, the circumstances are different. Malia has already been accepted at Harvard and will get her diploma before taking a break. It also appears her decision is linked to being near her father in his final year in office, which means I doubt the president shares the angst I do.

For Christopher, he will be spending his senior year of high school in the Land of the Midnight Sun. However, because he has been told not to expect to receive any credit for the classes he will be taking in Sweden - even for learning Swedish! - he's decided to return for a fifth year of high school where he will finish up the classes he wants and needs to take before applying to college.

All the same, it will be a year of traveling, experiencing life in another country and learning a few things about the world, such as while Dad may sit in the van waiting for him to finish his breakfast or a long shower, European trains will not.

Each year around 9,000 students between 15 and 19 take part in the Rotary Youth Exchange, which arranges for students to live with host families for three months at a time while attending the same school for the year. The Rotary Youth Exchange has been around since 1929 as a way to promote greater understanding among nations, something that, by virtue of the dialogue in the presidential campaign, is still sorely needed.

By the same token, gap years are not new either. They're common in Europe and are growing in popularity in the United States. According to the Associated Press, between 30,000 and 40,000 students each year take such a break, with the numbers having increased 22 percent last year alone.

Given all of that, the criticism and debate surrounding Malia's decision to take a 12-month gap in her studies is curious.

“As with everything the Obamas do or have ever done, this seems highly suspicious,” wrote the ever-acerbic Rex Huppke of the Chicago Tribune.

Granted, taking such a break is like digging a hole in your yard. It's only as good as what you plant in its place. But there are so many things worth planting, why is the presumptive definition of “gap year” a privileged 12-month timeout of couch surfing and Snapchatting?

It's possible that young people may go out and learn a few things - on their own. Without somebody at a white board diagramming their sentences or determining the hypotenuse of their train route.

Yes, it's important to learn the Pythagorean theorem. But there's also value in being forced to bargain for a cheap hotel in Pythagoreio, the Greek home of Pythagoras, and discovering that he was not only a great mathematican, he was a philosopher who had profound impact on the thinking of Plato, that guy who wrote, “without wandering around and examining everything in detail, one is unable to secure understanding.”

I don't think he meant that you had to secure your undergraduate degree first.

According to the American Gap Association, which tracks such things, 98 percent of students who responded to a 2015 survey reported that the time off they took from their education helped them develop as a person. Ninety-seven percent said taking a gap year “increased their maturity.” Yes, traveling, studying or doing work programs abroad can be expensive, although there are less-expensive alternatives, such as the Rotary Exchange Program, which I can't praise enough.

Taking a gap year also has its risks. A student can lose his or her academic momentum. But there's also risk in racing from a stressed high school environment to a stressed college environment where one can fail or, worse, emerge with $30,000 in debt, no clear direction and no clear skills beyond the mastery of beer pong. Thirty percent of all college and university students drop out after their first year. How many leave because they are don't sure why they are there in the first place?

So let's give Malia and other students a break. And while we are at it, let's cut parents some slack as well.

Moms and dads hear many odd things when they start telling people that you're letting their child go on an exchange program or take a gap year. I heard one mother of four children, all of whom went on exchange, say to her, “I would never let my child do that. We are too close.”

I don't know. Maybe we'll regret sending Christopher go off to Scandinavia for a year. But I do know that when the day comes when he looks at us at some crowded airport and says “I'll see you in a year. I'll be fine,” and we say, “OK,” it won't be because we're not close.

Being close is easy as a parent. Letting go because it's time to is hard.