Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.
Taking a few gap years definitely did not hurt me any. It gave me time to mature a bit more and really find myself. I finished my Bachelor of Arts in History in 2001, but did not want to settle down just yet.
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Do I Really Want To Do A Gap Year?
My final semester, I had two posters on my ceiling as possibly gap year destinations. One was a surfer riding a giant wave in Hawaii, the other was of Mammoth Mountain. I decided on Mammoth Mountain as my next destination.
The Decision
I managed to talk my best friend and roommate to join me in Mammoth. We attended a job fair in August and moved up in October. We went from living in a cozy townhouse in San Marcos near San Diego with fairly easy jobs as servers, to a hotel room right across from the ski area. Initially, we were both wondering what the hell we were thinking, but when it started snowing the second day we were there, we realized we had made a great choice (image below: the view from our employee housing).
Learning The Hard Way
We were very newbie snowboarders at the time and had never ridden in powder snow. We did a lot of on the job training, but the other employees in employee housing helped us progress pretty quickly. We made a lot of friends (almost every night was a party of some sort in employee housing) this way. It was like a college frathouse built around the snowboarding subculture.
Thriving in the Mountains
I rode up the mountain being towed by snowmobiles, rode down the mountain in snow cats during a big storm, worked construction cleanup, opened a food court and a restaurant, all in the span of my first season, in addition to riding the mountain every chance I got.
Long-Term Effects
Eventually I got a job in town at a better restaurant and met some very key people in my life. Eric my restaurateur mentor really helped me grow as a leader by believing in me and dealing with my sometimes crap attitude. This helped me gain the confidence and experience to take on becoming a high school teacher. Later I would meet my future wife in one of the local bookstores.
The Mighty Yodler
After a hard days work, “The Yodler” bar and grill was a stones throw away from our employee housing. One could spin the “wheel of shots” while enjoying the company of the guests and the other employees. It was a good honest life, even if the pay was not the best. I learned that quality of life is not entirely dependent on income, that environment is also very key.
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