THE BEST WAY to make friends at university is to show everyone you’re better than them. The gap year is the most effective way of gaining this kind of kudos. You’ve swam with the dolphins, cured the AIDs orphans, shagged the Australian barman and worn the fisherman’s trousers. It wasn’t for your CV; it was for your street cred. Now it’s time to make the most of your gap year. Maximise your potential.
Remember...YOU
It’s important to start the day in the right frame of mind. Look at yourself in the mirror. Breathe tantrically or yogically. Try to remember what the Sri Lankan shaman showed you. Check yourself out. You’re pretty sexy in that hemp dress aren’t you? Well Bruce obviously thought so. This kind of arrogance is an important tool. Exploit it.
Swagger or sway (depending on your sex) into the kitchen, preferably rolling a cigarette. For maximum coolness, make this a joint. Remember a truly successful gap year wanker shows a working knowledge of illegal drugs.
Chaff
Cannabis is acceptable as a minimum, but the outstanding individual will show a willingness to try smack [“like fucking an angel,” CG08]. If weed is all you have, then it must be referred to by a name no one else uses, like “chaff.” Try to pronounce it in a funny way. It’s what they call it in Nepal, dontchaknow?
To fully utilise the opportunities a gap year offers, one must be ready with an anecdote at all times. Don’t worry too much about the contents, no one will listen to you. The key thing is the way the story is introduced. Good phrases to use are “that reminds me of when I was on my gap year,” “when I was in ______,” and “it was so funny…”
The greater the variety in your use of stock phrases, the more stories people will think you have, and the cooler you will be. Other ‘gappers’ must be approached with caution. They can be a useful foil for the manipulative individual, helping him to turn the conversation onto the subject of gap years, and thus establishing social superiority. Such conversations and reminiscences are also a great way of ostracizing non-gappers. However remember that every other gapper is a rival. When conversing with a ‘fellow traveller’, you should try to hide snide remarks and barbs in every comment. Try, for example, to ‘accidentally’ describe a rival as a ‘tourist’. This is merely the simplest of countless ploys that are available to the Machiavellian young adventurer.
Cocaine and mud huts
Be flexible. Remember that there are several types of ‘credible’ gap year, from the altruistic to the super hedonistic. The important thing is to demonstrate that you belong at one extreme. Either you built your own mud hut, caught grasshoppers for dinner and cooked them on a fire which you made by rubbing sticks together, in between teaching (don’t bother to specify a subject) orphans in Soweto; or you clocked up the world record for shagging Thai beach boys, and had a memorable cocainefuelled night of passion with the President of Cambodia (and his entourage.)
In certain circumstances it may be advisable to change your story to suit the audience, as long as due care is taken to ensure that inconsistencies go undetected. In general however, it’s probably best to stick to your story. Remember, you swam with the dolphins, wore the trousers, cured the orphans and shagged the barman. Try not to mix these up.