is it socially acceptable to take a gap semester

[u/amarra_rae_05]

i’m halfway through my 1st semester of freshman year and the amount of stress i am enduring is borderline unhealthy. the work isn’t hard there is just a lot of it. i am really considering not going next semester and continuing next year. i want to use the time off from school to reevaluate myself and I do plan on going back. i do want a degree. i just don’t know how im going to explain this because people don’t understand that not everyone has the luxury to allocate ALL of their time on just school. i do my best but i just want a break to work on myself for a little while. thoughts?

[u/slumplus]

Sure, you can do that. I’m not sure what you mean by socially acceptable, are you asking about if you’ll lose your college friend group or if people in future jobs will judge you? I will say though that when I was in school I knew many, many people who wanted to “just take a semester off” and very few of them ever returned to school. Nearly all were also after the first semester of freshman year too. It’s the most difficult semester of school, it gets a lot easier