And, while it’s not much, they do get a stipend. Boomers bring decades of valuable experience to the work they do in this country or abroad, and they get a chance to think and prepare for their encore careers. We can and should create more opportunities for boomers to join the Peace Corps, VISTA or AmeriCorps. Everyone knows someone who wanted to serve in the Peace Corps but never got around to it. A provision in the Serve America Act authorizes 10 encore fellowships in each state, but it has yet to be funded. Even the federal government plans to get into the act. Those in encore fellowships number only in the dozens right now, but more corporations are joining these pioneers. Some corporations, like HP, are leading the way by offering employees who are eligible to retire the chance to work part-time for a year for a local nonprofit - for pay.
“That year of reflection was an important part of my journey,” Nolan said. Her company shut down, providing her a year’s salary as severance. Some individuals in their 50s and 60s are in a position to take their gap year - whether they’re “retired” from a career, have been downsized, or are taking a breather before “unretiring.” Anne Nolan is one. It’s no accident that the words Sabbath and sabbatical derive from the same root. That’s what academics do, and they don’t even have to call it a Sagmeister. His innovation: Take a chunk of those retirement years and allocate them throughout the life course, building in time for new learning, growth, disruption, and renewal every seven years or so. Why not bring that tradition to the United States?ĭesigner Stefan Sagmeister decided that the old regiment of 25 years of education, then 40 years of working, then 25 of leisured retirement didn’t cut it. In Britain, there are approximately 200,000 gray gappers each year. In other words, many may be using the cover of retirement, followed by unretirement, as a kind of de facto gap period. population first retires and then “ unretires,” an act researchers find is primarily by design and not the result of unexpected circumstances. A 2010 study from the RAND Corporation shows that a sizable portion of the U.S. Most people are already taking time off, in one form or another.
It could help focus efforts on an encore career - one that combines meaning, continued income and social impact. It would provide an opportunity to disrupt familiar patterns (and inertia), to grow personally, to be exposed to new experiences, and to try on potential future roles. A gap year would offer those in their 50, 60s and 70s a chance to regroup, to find the kind of renewal they need to start a new stage of life. Joseph Campbell described midlife as the time when we get to the top of the ladder - only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall. To fill the void, why not create a gap year for grown-ups? Don’t we deserve a break, too - after juggling extreme jobs and family responsibilities in shaky economic times? Right now, there’s an absence of any formal rites or routes of passage for those moving from midlife to the new phase with no name. With lifespans stretching into the ninth decade, what are they going to with their next 30 years - and how will they pay for it? Instead millions of 50- and 60-somethings approach this territory with uncertainty. For most people, the end of middle age is no longer attached to the beginning of retirement or old age. What existed for their parents - retirement parties, gold watches and pensions to cover the costs of decades of leisure - is gone. What do their parents do to mark the end of exhausting midlife careers and decades of child-rearing? What do they do to rest and prepare for what’s next in their lives? These days, thousands of college-bound teenagers mark the end of high school with a gap year, a chance to stop and think, to work and travel, and to gain the perspective and energy necessary for making the most of what’s next.
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