What Your Gap Year Says About You

You chose to go on a NOLS trip after romanticizing the whole tree hugging thing because you spent too much time on Tumblr or Pinterest. And you will tell anyone who gives you the time of day that it was an earth shattering and profound experience for you. Why? Because rule number one about NOLS is never shut the fuck up about NOLS. You will hijack any conversation to tell a story that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject being discussed at the moment and it is in no way compelling or even mildly titillating to someone who wasn't on your NOLS trip. "Well, you had to be there. It's a NOLS thing," you'll tell them when your story is met with underwhelmed facial expressions. After your NOLS trip, you will go on to a college like Colorado College or UC Santa Cruz that is chock full of granola ass hippies who, much like you, grew disillusioned with their WASPy upbringing. You bonded with your classmates over your ability to get offended over even mildly controversial things and pontificate about diversity and acceptance, even though the boarding school population supersedes the population of minorities at your school. 

You credit your toned ass to hiking, when really it's all that cardio you get from getting up on your soapbox to be a sanctimonious asshole whenever you hear someone say something remotely controversial and getting down from your soapbox when you're told that what they just said isn't even mean and you didn't hear them out. The only common ground you can ever find in a conversation with a frat bro is your shared love of Dave Matthews Band and your shared disdain for Lena Dunham. You call out your friends for being label whores who spend more money for brand name recognition, yet you will drop extra dough for craft beer instead of mildly shittier beer and for gluten free and all natural food, even though you don't have a gluten intolerance and all natural doesn't mean that much. You bitch and moan about boys who sexualize your devotion to yoga, yet YOU are the one who brought up that you can put your leg behind your head and that you have intimate piercings in the same breath. You whine about how Coachella is full of cultural appropriation, yet you have a hamsa tattoo and can't even articulate what it actually means. Oh, and you hate that festival because it's full of rich kids who are pretending to be hippies, yet you were a fixture at Burning Man for the past couple of years. So...you're the worst. 

[Photo via @nolsedu]