A college education today costs approximately four hundred billion dollars a second. But not every eighteen-year-old is prepared to take the fullest advantage of a mid-morning Writer’s Workshop I recitation. Maybe instead of setting fire to a giant pallet of cash because peer pressure says high school graduates should go straight to college, you could take a detour, look around the world and experience some of it via a gap year.

Jane Goldstone Sarouhan has been leading experiential education directly or counseling families on gap year programs for 25 years. Along with her husband Jason she founded J2Guides to create a gap year counseling service that emphasizes access (i.e. less expensive) and agency (i.e. let’s let the kids drive decisions about their own lives). Jane also takes us on her own circuitous journey from Bay Area idealism to Western Mass bliss by the least direct route allowable.

J2Guides can be found at J2Guides.com and at @j2guides on Instagram and on facebook.