Mon, June 9, 2025

I Wish I Had Done Something Like This

Farhad Anklesaria Co-head of Global Student Recruitment
Chris Whittle Founder and Executive Chairman
Evan Grillon Senior Writer
Baret Scholars

“I wish I had done something like this” is a sentence, a sentiment, that we’ve heard many times this past year from students, parents, and educators who wished they too had taken time to explore before college. The transition from high school to university, a step on the path to adulthood, is acknowledged but often ignored — something that one hopes will just happen. True, this transition is not a ritual that can be choreographed but rather a rite of passage, a time when inspiration and ideas are magical, an opportunity to simply become. Many desire to take a year to discover themselves and the world, but to actually take that step is sometimes regarded as wasteful or fantastical.

 In my previous career as a test-prep tutor and college advisor, I often witnessed first-hand the vicissitudes of this period in an individual’s life. One of my students who went to Harvard College took a semester off to learn surfing in Barbados and read Proust. Another who went to Parsons School of Design spent months in Vietnam working at a school, meeting new people, realizing, she said, that she could actually be an adult. There are many stories of college-age students going off into the world for an adventure. Some parents disallow it; others grudgingly accept; still others encourage. From my point of view, it is not so much the spirit of adventure that drives students to the peak of Kilimanjaro or the ruins of Machu Picchu but a deeper need to shed childhood and see the world through one’s own eyes. Many students need a chance to pause, a chance to trust their intuition—to prove to themselves that they can make it on their own.

This impulse is not a new one. In fact, it dates back to the 1600s, and perhaps even earlier. Young men, and later young women, from various European countries would leave their homes to go on The Grand Tour: a route that took them from Paris to Lyon, through Switzerland and over the Alps through the Cenis Pass into Italy, where they spent time in Florence, Venice, Rome, and Naples. Accompanied by cicerones, knowledgeable guides and tutors, they met other Grand Tourists; they spent time in museums; they sought entrance to private collections; they witnessed cultures and economies firsthand; they left their homes behind to become more than their own history.

Richard Lassels, a famous travel writer and grand tourer of the 1600s, listed in the introduction to his book The Voyage of Italy four areas in which The Grand Tour furnished “an accomplished, consummate Traveler”: the intellectual, the social, the ethical, and the political. Indeed, Gibbon, the great historian and author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, wrote, “According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.” The idea was not to be a tourist, but to become a student of the world.

The Grand Tour began to fade away in the 19th century. About 100 years later, a journey was set up again—not so much a tour but a trail. The Hippie Trail was a journey of exploration and self-discovery that took young people from Europe to South Asia, marking a return to the wanderlust spirit of earlier eras. Today, when we think of taking time off from formal education, we might be reminded of Steve Jobs, Coco Chanel, Madame CJ Walker, and even Charles Darwin. However, the aspirational greatness of these individuals can obscure the value of studying the world, and more particularly, travel at that age. There is a chance that a young person has to change a trajectory that they may never encounter again.

Today, the march of college admissions has become ever more fervent and competitive, often drowning out voices that encourage a more fertile and variegated transition to adulthood. For most, there is no transition from childhood to adulthood—rather they transition from being students to applicants, and they continue to see themselves in variations of their college common applications. Rather than embarking on their own journey, these young adults find themselves traveling a well-worn path to adulthood, attending career fairs, networking through their fraternities and sorority associations, and other clubs. Young people find themselves scrambling for internships and finally jobs, sometimes settling into their lives, wondering all the while if there wasn’t a chance somewhere years prior to step off the path and do something that might change the trajectory of their lives.

More than ever, travel presents such an opportunity to step off this path. To travel is to spend time being misunderstood or conversely, trying to make oneself understood in an unfamiliar place. It is in that effort that one learns very important lessons; perhaps most importantly of paying attention—to the world at large and to oneself. As Mark Twain once said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

Then there is the data. Recently, Middlebury College and the Gap Year Association shared that structured gap years help students in university: They get higher GPAs, take on more leadership positions, and have better mental health. Robert Clagett, former Dean of Admissions at Middlebury College, designed a methodological approach showing that gap year students significantly outperform their peers academically, with positive effects lasting throughout their four years in college. Which is to say that there is a quantitative case for a gap year in addition to the romantic, qualitative case we have made above.

 And, there are many programs that are attempting to give students “pathways”—providing them with opportunities to get out of their comfort zone and be in the world. We recommend combing through the official Gap Year Association’s resources to see how different organizations have crafted their programs. Our group, Baret Scholars, is designed to embolden students to find their own way in the world by traveling to seven significant regions in one short year.

Students in our program live and learn in the cities of New York, São Paulo, Paris, Istanbul, Nairobi, New Delhi, and Beijing. This journey is not idle tourism, and students have a chance to learn deeply. Stephen Schwarzman, founder of Schwarzman Scholars, says any leader of the world must know China; at Baret Scholars, we feel a leader must know all the world.

Our students have structure in the form of our Morning Program, a daily event featuring performances and lectures that immerse them in the past and present of the regions they visit, while encouraging them to envision its future. In the afternoons students choose to attend seminars in domains of interest or engage with academic and career advising. Scholars also have freedom: their afternoons are their own, as are their weekends. They are afforded reading lists, but they are welcome to make their own choices and design their own projects. In each region, they are encouraged to engage with the culture and communities in which they are situated. They are not simply observers, but give back even as they are learning.

Learning continues in small groups as students embark on ten-day fellowships in each region. Just as those on the Grand Tour had cicerones, our scholars have fellows as guides and advisors. Accompanied by experienced world travelers and two accomplished Deans, students step out to traverse glaciers in Patagonia or engage in discourse with tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, to name just two examples.

We want our students to experience the thrill of possibility that comes with being trusted to make their own choices. We also want them to be humbled by the diversity and wonder of the world–to not only envision themselves as changemakers but to experience the world in all of its complexity and fluidity. Our hope is that each student who chooses our program, and others like it, emerges as a leader with respect and admiration for the cultures and regions in which they have lived and learned. 

Farhad Anklesaria is the co-head of global student recruitment at Baret Scholars, a global and transformative journey around the world for college-aged youth. A graduate of Yale College, Farhad has been an ethnographer, educator, and entrepreneur. He lives in London, where he is also training to become a psychoanalyst.

Chris Whittle is the founder and executive chairman of Baret Scholars. A pioneer in the world of education, Chris also co-founded and led Avenues: The World School, now one of the largest private schools in New York City with campuses in São Paulo, Shenzhen, and Silicon Valley.

Evan Grillon is a senior writer at Baret Scholars. A graduate of Williams College, he was previously an adjunct professor of creative writing at the University of Florida.