Alex Sirna

Ms. Ouderkirk

ENG 170

4/18/21

              Jonathan Zimmerman’s article called “Why Colleges Should Require a Gap Year” discusses the possibility of colleges giving students a gap year and filling that year with a compulsory-service year. Zimmerman’s claim is that colleges should give incentive for students to take a compulsory-service year and eventually make it a requirement for students to graduate because this will allow students to help their country and connect with different people from across the nation. Zimmerman supports his claim for bettering the country by saying that during the year, students would work by helping serve food at homeless shelters, help clean up parks, or be teacher assistants for lower grade children. Doing such actions and activities would benefit the country since it would help the country maintain its parks and natural reserves by getting rid of garbage that pollutes and harms the environment. Helping out at homeless shelters would help people get what they need to survive and make them feel that they are not forgotten. However, the program or requirement that Zimmerman is talking about for schools would give all of these activities and actions a workforce for them to work with and coordinate. All of these types of actions require individuals who are willing to sacrifice their time and, in some cases, money for no monetary gain. This makes it hard for organizations such as homeless shelters or those formed to help keep the environment clean to carry out their goals, but Zimmerman’s proposal would provide them with this, allowing them to carry out their goals and help others. The other main point made by Zimmerman is that it will give students an opportunity to meet people who are very different from them. His claim was that people who attend college are surrounded by people who are similar to them, and a requirement for a compulsory-service year would allow students to see how different people from other parts of the country are. This can also be true since many students who attend a college are likely from similar backgrounds, so having such a requirement on a national level would connect students from across the country, especially if the college’s team up with national organizations, as Zimmerman suggests in his article. Zimmerman’s use of language in his text is minimal. There are not many moments where he addressed the audience with his choice of words. The only time he did this was when he was talking about the financial challenges students would face taking this gap year. It sounds like he is addressing the audience here because this would be a major concern for people paying for college, or people who would be in the future. He addresses these concerns by saying that colleges could offer credit for these gap years and that partnering with organizations that support these gap years would help the college. I think that Zimmerman’s proposal should be taken into consideration since it would help the nation address the issues of environmental protection and economic inequality by exposing people to these situations and showing people how they can help these situations.  A gap year would have some problems such as the possibility of falling behind on studies. Even if schools allow gap years or require them, there is the possibility of students falling behind or forgetting what they learned from previous semesters, making it difficult to come back from the gap year. Communities would most likely benefit from this kind of action since they will get the people they need to improve the issues that are plaguing the community. As for families, it can be a hardship for students to have to take another year to complete college since it will take a full extra year before the student could actually work. At the same time, however, the issues that students would learn about and make contributions to solving are extremely important to the country and this could be a good way to raise awareness about the issues and get the people necessary to carry out these goals. Zimmerman’s proposal is not full proof, but it should be taken into consideration since the benefits it has to the individual students who would participate and the country as a whole cannot be ignored.