A year away

New Year, New Faces: As UNC-Chapel Hill prepares to begin a new fall semester, we introduce you to some of the new Tar Heels who will be looking to innovate, educate, serve – and change the world.

Growing up in Chapel Hill, Leah Simon always wanted to go to her hometown university.

But as she got closer to high school graduation, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill became less of a certainty.

“I was like, ‘Do I really want to stay in Chapel Hill? I have this opportunity to go somewhere else,’” she said. “I didn’t really know where I was going to go until right up to the deadline.”

In the end, it was the chance to get out of her hometown that brought Simon to Carolina.

A recipient of the University’s Global Gap Year Fellowship, Simon spent her first year as a Tar Heel traveling the world working with refugees and teaching English. During the span of six months, Simon experienced the Dominican Republic, Thailand, Burma, India and Israel as part of her gap year program.

“I think I grew a lot from a gap year,” she said. “I really like to travel and I think it was good for me.”

This fall, Simon will temporarily put her passport away and come back to the classroom to begin her academic career at Carolina where she plans for pursue her interests in global studies and public health — interests stoked by her travels.

Creating connections

Simon caught the travel bug the summer before her junior year at Carrboro High School when she took a service trip to the Dominican Republic.

“The exchange trip I went on to the Dominican Republic really changed my idea of travel and what it can be,” Simon said. “It really opened my eyes to how awesome it is getting to learn about other cultures.”

Inspired by her trip, Simon — along with other students at her high school — organized a project to help a rural community on the island gain better access to clean water. The group ultimately raised thousands of dollars to bring running water to the town.

But that project, along with soccer, SATs and classwork took a toll on Simon. She was exhausted by the time college selection time came around. She just wasn’t ready to go straight back to a classroom.

The Global Gap Year Fellowship gave her the opportunity to catch her breath before going back to school — with the added perk of traveling the world.

Organized through the Campus Y, the fellowship provides $7,500 for seven to 10 students accepted to UNC-Chapel Hill to spend the year abroad.

“This experience informs future studies, whether that means changing majors or minors, or it’s finding certain social justice issues they’ve become passionate about,” said Sarah Smith, the global civic engagement coordinator with Campus Y. “As they travel and they learn more about themselves, they’ll learn about what they’re passionate about and bring that back and use that in their work here.”

The only stipulation to the program, Smith said, is that students are required to spend at least six months volunteering, interning or working with public service projects.

For Simon, who created the trip plan herself, the goal of her gap year was to foster relationships much like the ones she made on her first trip to the Dominican Republic.

“I just wanted to connect it to the Chapel Hill community and make connections that will be really meaningful and I could bring back to Carolina and grow a lot from them,” she said.

The gap year

As her friends were packing up and heading to the college last fall, Simon was preparing for the first stop of her trip: the Dominican Republic.

For three months, Simon helped teach English for an English immersion class, tutored local high school students and volunteered at a local organization for impoverished youth. She even created an exchange program between Carrboro High School and the local high school.

Simon spent the next three months in Thailand where she taught English at a refugee camp and trained refugees to take that knowledge back to their villages to teach more people.

Following her stint in Thailand, she also spent three weeks in Burma working with an English summer camp.

“It was a really interesting time for me to go there,” Simon said. “I went to a village where I was the only foreigner. For many people, I was the only white person they had ever seen. It was very culturally different, and the people were so lovely and I really got to learn a lot about who they are.”

Simon then strayed from her travel plan slightly, spending a month in India volunteering with Tibetan refugees in Ladakh — the home of the Dalai Lama.

“I really felt like I wanted to go to India and I became really interested in Indian culture midway into my gap year,” Simon said. “I ended up spending a lot longer than I had anticipated.”

After spending a few weeks in Israel and after her volunteer work falling through, Simon returned to the U.S. ready to begin her college career.

“My perspective had definitely changed — I feel like I’m more patient because I was forced to be patient with myself and others a lot of the time and I feel like I’m more understanding as well,” she said. “I feel like I’m more adaptable. I also learned about other cultures and learned history in a way that would have been different to reading about it in a class. It felt more relevant and I was able to wrap my head around it better.

“I’m really happy that I took that gap year. I think that taking that time gave me time to think. You just have time to think about things. It was really important for me to have that time and to just reflect.”