CGS Students Thrive in Their Gap Semesters

Sheila Chen (CGS’26) (clockwise from top left), Kennedy Anderson (CGS’26), Mehar Kaur Matharoo (CGS’26), and Leo Huang (CGS’26). Photos courtesy of each student
CGS Students Thrive in Their Gap Semesters
From delivering babies in a busy city hospital to programming classes in JavaScript, these newly matriculated freshmen recount their experiences
A gap semester is 100 days of endless possibilities.
As part of the College of General Studies curriculum, incoming freshmen take a gap semester in the fall before matriculating at Boston University in the spring. The 523 students in this year’s CGS cohort spent the past months volunteering at an understaffed clinic, working to save money, traveling and studying abroad, and more. The students are encouraged to plan their gap semester experiences after talking to the CGS academic advising team, working together to identify goals and think about how their time can best be spent.
Alyse Bithavas (CGS’85, CAS’87, Wheelock’89,’97), CGS associate dean for student academic life, says the gap semester is an incredible opportunity for students, since they get to “explore their own interests and learn about themselves, no matter where they are in the world. No matter how they choose to spend it, students arrive on campus from their gap semester energized and motivated to take advantage of the opportunities BU offers.”
BU Today spoke with four incoming CGS students about how they spent their gap semester. All of them say that one of the most fulfilling aspects was the opportunity the semester provided to get away from their daily routines.
Here are their stories.
Sheila Chen (CGS’26)

When first-gen student Chen was thinking about where to work during her gap semester, she decided to stick with the job she had her high school senior year—teaching. She had assisted with a fourth-grade classroom during the school year, but her gap semester position was co-teaching in a local preschool near her home in Portland, Oreg.
“Little kids don’t have any preexisting biases in their head. They are very blunt and keep you honest in such an innocent way, so it’s so cute,” Chen says. “There is no self-consciousness. You can strictly be yourself.”
Chen’s work ranged from reading books to her students to helping them develop fine motor skills like using scissors to being an extra set of eyes, “because they can be a handful,” she says, smiling. She especially enjoyed working with very young children because they learned and changed so much in a short amount of time. “I worked there for six months, and you could see their development and maturity,” she says. “I started with a group of two-year-olds who were absolutely crazy, and eventually they became very manageable and able to take directions.”
Chen enjoyed the gap semester more than she’d expected. “At first, I was hesitant,” she says. “But it forced me to slow down a little bit and take a step back.”
Some of the lessons she learned in the preschool classroom can be applied to the college setting, too: “I think that there is something special about interacting with kids, and specifically two- and three-year-olds. It was also their first time in school, and they’re meeting all new people and learning all these social norms. It’s kind of similar to college.”
Chen is entering CGS with an undecided major, but she’s leaning towards studying psychology, specifically child development psychology or anxiety-related disorders in multicultural kids. She says her desire to study these areas was inspired by her teaching jobs and her personal experiences growing up as a first-generation Chinese-American student. She plans to explore BU’s Newbury Center (which supports first-gen students on campus), the Asian Student Union, and BU’s Pre-Law Journal as she settles into college life.
Kennedy Anderson (CGS’26)

Anderson had initially planned to spend her gap semester working as a nanny near her home in Stamford, Conn., so she could earn money. However, the idea of travel kept nagging at her.
So she found a happy medium: a position that allowed her to volunteer and work overseas and travel in her free time. On the website Worldpackers, which posts volunteer opportunities where housing and other amenities are offered in exchange for the work, she browsed positions that included helping on an olive farm in Japan and a husky dog farm in Switzerland. She finally settled on a hospital in Tanzania since it was more in line with her career goals of working in biochemistry and pharmacology research. By October, Anderson had moved to Dar es Salaam—Tanzania’s largest city and financial hub—to work in a hospital.
On her first day, she walked into the local hospital’s emergency room and was immediately put to work helping with medical procedures alongside doctors and nurses, even though she had no qualifications or prior training. Within the first 20 minutes, a doctor handed Anderson a syringe of anesthetic with directions on where to shoot it into a patient since he needed emergency surgery on his broken foot. The remainder of her first day was spent at similar lightning-speed.
In other weeks she rotated to the lab, where she helped with phlebotomy, specimen testing, and identifying bacteria seen on cell cultures. She even delivered two babies unassisted. Though the primary language in Tanzania is Swahili, Anderson says she was fortunate that many people also spoke English.
Living and working in a low-income country was a huge adjustment, she says. “The doctors are doing the best they can. People are coming in at every minute of the day—I saw people needing stitches, who had been in motorcycle accidents, and who were dying.” The oppressive heat—some days it was 105 degrees—was also a challenge, she says.
Anderson lived with a host family and traveled around the city with friends she’d made from Switzerland and the Netherlands. On weekends, they traveled to places like Zanzibar and Bongoyo Island and took a safari in Mikumi National Park, where they saw water buffalos, hippos, lions, giraffes, monkeys, and elephants.
The trip gave Anderson a newfound appreciation of, and excitement about, continuing in the medical field, and she wholeheartedly recommends that others consider spending their gap semester in a similar way. “If students want to go and travel, or do something fulfilling for a local community or themselves, I would say, don’t hesitate. It truly changes you,” she says. “I have lived a different life since coming back from Africa. It’s very, very different, and so you live your life a little bit more preserving, almost. And you have so much more value for things after an experience like this.”
Leo Huang (CGS’26)

Huang thought he’d travel a bit during his gap semester, but his plans were cemented when he received an email from CGS promoting a new partnership with Verto Education organizing academic travel semesters for students. BU students can spend close to four months in either Seville, Florence, Prague, or Buenos Aires, taking classes and earning 15 college credits. Many of the classes count for BU requirements or electives.
Huang, who’d never been abroad, chose Seville and picked courses in areas he felt would complement classes he intends to take at BU, like international relations, public speaking, and languages. He plans to enroll eventually in the Questrom School of Business to study finance and business.
Outside of the classroom, he started and coled a business club with a friend. In their weekly meetings, they led casual discussions on topics like the stock market and innovation, edited each other’s résumés, and held mock interview sessions. On the weekends, he traveled to places like Morocco (his pick for the best food), London, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, and Ibiza.
Huang says he loves BU so far and is adjusting well. He is planning to join the coed business fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi, the Asian Students Association, the Chinese Students Association, and maybe a consulting or accounting club.
The Verto program inspired him to jump-start his academic and professional pursuits, he says. “It helped me in many ways. I feel more prepared to travel for the upcoming CGS summer semester in London, and I made friends with a bunch of CGS students also enrolled in the Verto program before even stepping on campus. So I would recommend it. It was a good experience.”
Mehar Kaur Matharoo (CGS’26)

Matharoo came to BU by way of New Delhi with plans to enroll in the Duan Family Center for Computing & Data Sciences after her two years in CGS. She used her gap semester as a chance to take online programming language courses at BU like Python, C++, and Javascript, which she knows she’ll need at CDS. Her reasoning was that she could focus more on these classes during her gap semester since she wouldn’t have other coursework or a robust social calendar competing for her attention.
She also picked up a hobby from YouTube during the fall: crochet. She watched learn-to-crochet videos, which helped her knit her first sweater as well as several small stuffed animals. She also took dance classes and played in a nightly local pick-up basketball league. “I was just thinking that if I have the time to do it right now, then why not?” she says.
The gap semester also gave Matharoo more time with her family. They traveled around India and to Australia to visit her brother, who is in grad school there. She relished being at home, which meant she could celebrate many festivals with her family. “I can easily say that I’ve never felt so close to my family than I have in these past few months,” she says.
Now at BU, Matharoo plans to join the BU Consulting Group, the Fashion and Retail Association, and BU’s chapter of 180 Degrees Consulting. She says she feels more prepared for her future classes, given the hard work she put in before officially matriculating. “I feel like the gap semester is a really amazing experience,” she says. “It is a good chance to get to know yourself and just explore different areas that you never thought you could try, get some work experience, do internships, or even travel and explore yourself, or other opportunities. Whatever interests you.”
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