According to Time Magazine, this has been the decade from hell. Awesome. I’m going to cross “survive a crappy decade” off my list right away.

One could argue the point that it’s going to take us all a while to clean up after a decade this bad. College is too expensive and won’t help anyone to get a job in this economy, so why spend next year working too damn hard at school and the job you have to hold down in order to live somewhere other than a van down by the river?

I would suggest, to the college students (or recent college graduates who still haven’t found a job), that taking a gap year might not be a bad idea. Getting out of the country is the most expensive portion; you’d be surprised by how little money a traveler willing to rough it can subsist on, especially if one avoids Europe.

For inspiration, you can read Cody McKibben’s post over at Thrilling Heroics, in which he wraps up the year he just spent living in Thailand.

Posted by Alexa Harrington