The best friend of one of our Cape Eleuthera Institute Gap Year alumni wrote this great article about how a gap year changed her friend’s life. It’s definitely worth a read, especially if you are considering taking a gap year yourself! Read the article here.
Tag Archives: gap year program
Gap Year Fall 2013 Graduation
The idea of a Gap Year is to take a step back to view the big picture. To take a step back to look at where you’ve come from, where you’ve gone and see where you’d like to go. To take a step back so you can take the right steps forward.
The program here came to an end last week, culminating in the students Demonstration of Learning and Graduation ceremony. Over the past nine weeks Eryn, Ryan and Jordan have made profound change in their own lives and of those surrounding them.
All of the things that were accomplished by these amazing individuals are difficult to quantify with words, however a list of all the things we delved into over the program might suffice:
- Taking marine ecology classes
- Teaching an environmental issue class of their own
- Taking a human ecology class
- Community service projects
- Down Island camping trip, experiencing a sense of place on Eleuthera
- Community outreach at the Deep Creek Middle School
- Conducting the Fall 2013 shallow water conch surveys
- Adventuring on 5 day Kayak expedition
- Being part of a research team as an intern for three weeks
- Getting both Open Water and Advanced Scuba certified
- Presenting their learning to the wider community
They have each proved themselves in both a personal and professional setting, being part of the community family and involved with the research facility. During the student’s demonstration of learning it was clear how much they are taking from the program. The diverse learnings of each student are a testament to each of their personal challenges and growth.
We would like to wish the Gap Year Team of Fall 2013 all the luck in the world as they move onto other endeavors and experiences, we hope you take what you learned here and build upon it. You are the game changers.
If you’re interested in joining the Gap Year Team of Spring 2014 or learning more about the Gap Year program in general, you can find out more on our website; http://www.ceibahamas.org/gap-year.aspx.
Maxeys Visit Campfire Safari Academy
If you are looking for a great GAP year challenge, follow other alumni who have spent some time exploring and learning all about African wildlife and conservation. Recently the Maxeys visited Campfire Safari Academy, located in the Balule Nature Reserve and part of the Greater Kruger National Park. The Academy is focused on educating the next generation of wildlife conservation professionals to help conserve the natural beauty of Africa’s flora and fauna. There is the potential to build a bridge through our GAP year at Cape Eleuthera Institute to GAP and intern opportunities at Campfire Academy.
Final Gap Year Update
The sun is shining, the water is glistening, and the gappers are getting antsy because we just finished our last full week here at CEI. This week saw the culmination of our intensive programs, and we all worked hard to finish out our independent work strongly. While a few of us spent time in the wet lab finishing up experiments or dissections, others worked hard to make their marks on campus through various projects. We also spent time working on our final human ecology papers, in which we all chose an environmental issue to research and discuss. Along with our papers, we began to plan our Demonstrations of Learning (DoLs), which we will be presenting to the greater community in a few days. It means a lot that we will get to explain what we’ve taken away from this island to those who are also lucky to call it home
Although our time on Eleuthera is coming to an end and we’re preparing to go our separate ways, we will carry the knowledge that we have acquired in the past super-awesome-cool eight weeks with us wherever we may end up.
Gapz forever.
Liza Wright-Fairbanks
Gap Program Update #6
What a busy week! This final week of February brought the midpoint of our intensives (see the previous post for background info), the much-anticipated Monster Run-Swim, and various other excitements!
Intensives continued for the gappers – for me that meant continuing on with the shark team, the highlight of which was discovering we sharking gappers are not bad luck (aka we finally got to help with a shark!!!). After a long morning setting up and then watching our line in the marina, tempting a number of sharks with fresh bait from fishermen down the dock, we finally had one large nurse shark bite! Jack, Shaper and I got to help Brendan and Ian take the necessary samples and measurements, plus tag the shark before releasing it again. This was the second-to-last nurse shark needed for the longline physiology study – wahoo!
On Tuesday night, various members of the CEI/IS community gathered for a Coffeehouse. Among a cluster of various talents from baking to putting chickens into tonic immobility (more commonly used – at least here – with sharks), Shaper performed an excerpt from the Vagina Monologues written by her friend, Sasek a poem by the spoken-word poet Andrea Gibson, and Jack sang Neil Young’s Heart of Gold with two of the interns. All around a fun, talent-filled evening!
Wednesday was Foundation Day, celebrated with participation in various activities (I went lobstering, which turned into Shaper and I practicing hauling ourselves into the boat – just getting buff), meetings with our “extended advisories” that we will be a part of (briefly) while the IS students are here, and a barbeque and bonfire on Sunset Beach! Continue reading
Gap Program Update #5
It’s week five of our time here on Eleuthera, and we started off the past seven days by diving head first into each of our intensive projects. Just a little background before I continue: for the rest of our time here at CEI, each of us gets to help out on various projects going on at the institute. Each gap year student will be doing something different for their last three weeks, depending on what projects interest them the most.
I spent the week working with the wonderful shark team here at CEI. Currently, they are doing a longline behavioral study, seeing how sharks act once they are hooked on a longline, and how this affects their blood counts. Two other gappers, along with myself, got to go out and help set and check the longline for sharks. As of now, we have yet to see a shark, and we are slowly becoming convinced that we have cursed the entire team. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that this coming week will bring new results!
Other than intensives, we completed two more dives Continue reading
Gap Program Update #4
This Tuesday nine of us embarked upon a sea kayaking trip – destination: Lighthouse Beach for our 48-hour solo experience. With choppy waters, we paddled a whopping mile from campus before having to beach the boats and camp out for the night. Day two, we try again: only to encounter more sea-sickening waves and exerting far too much effort for the distance traveled. We stop for lunch and a nap on the beach, then out on the water again. Alas, we make it one-third of the way to our destination before resulting to hitching a ride the rest of the way to Lighthouse. Along the way, some lovely conversations, bonding over games of Wizard, and the best campfire pizza bliss. Valentine’s Day dawned upon us and we spent the holiday alone — in the most literal sense. Thursday marked the beginning of our48-hour solo. Seven of us scattered along the shore of Lighthouse Beach with nothing but pink sand, our thoughts, and the horizon of each new day before us.
Solo: a time for self reflection, awareness, acceptance. Ye of little faith who may be wondering, “What in the world do you plan on doing with your life?” Well, I took some time during my solo to contemplate this question and let me affirm your doubts by responding–I still have no idea. “But,” you say, “weren’t you supposed to Continue reading
Gap Year Program Update #3
Why hello there! Here it is…the much-awaited update of the Gap Year lord and ladies. The highlight of this week was our down-island trip, during which we got to see some groovy spots on the island. Starting at the Laughing Lizard Café with a breathtakingly close encounter with Lenny Kravitz, we journeyed north to Harbour Island. We put on our ritzy pants and ventured into the resorts, only to discover that Cape Eleuthera is a far more beautiful, righteous, and down to earth place to be. After scrounging around looking at menus of the various restaurants, we decided that instead of spending our college tuition money on a steak and accompanying beverage, we would retire to the fried food shacks and eat al fresco. A great time was had by all as we watched the sun set, munched on questionable fried items, and listened to the sage life advice of Scotty and Taylor.
The next day we toured Spanish Wells, which was enticing insofar as it felt like an episode of The Twilight Zone, and the accents were delightfully funky. In order to understand what I’m talking about, one must travel to Spanish Wells and experience the magic therein. We went on to explore the Hatchet Bay Caves, Continue reading
Gap Year Program Update #2
It’s been a busy week down on Eleuthera, and with our Down Island Trip right around the corner, us gappers are excited about all we have experienced and accomplished in the last seven days.
SCUBA
After grinding away for hours on the elearning, we all passed our final assessments and were able to get out on the water for some real SCUBA training. We started with some confined dives at The Saddle where we learned and practiced skills to get our Open Water Diver certification. After 4 confined dives over the course of the week, and practicing a bunch of skills both under and above the water, we all received our Open Water Diver certifications on Thursday and began advanced work Sunday.
Pig Slaughter
We awoke on Wednesday morning to a beautiful sunrise and headed over to the farm Continue reading
Gap Year Update #1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=o01WD8fUUKE
When I asked around the copious newcomers that arrived at Cape Eleuthera Institute in the past week or so, if they could describe their experience so far, they responded ultimately with; surreal, funky fresh, refreshing, really salty, filled with lots of lettuce, and extremely informative. Personally, I would not object to any of those, but due to lack of time, as I am a gap year student here at The Cape Eleuthera Institute, and have to finish my prerequisites for SCUBA training, I am only going to focus on the week being “surreal, informative, and refreshing.”
Along with four other gappers (for the sake of an easier flow to this blog post, and a more real description of our time here, I am going to refer to a gap year student as a “gapper”, what everyone else has come to call us), we arrived to the sunny south side of the island Eleuthera, and it immediately seemed as if the luminous sun hovering the enticing, crystal, teal waters sucked out the oxygen from the moment, where we were all amazed Continue reading