The start of my gap year can be summed up by one word - fear. There was no excitement, anticipation or thoughts of adventure. My best friend Laura and I got on the plane, looked at each other and thought, 'What on earth are we doing?'
We both cried practically all the way to LA and kept saying to each other, 'If we hate it we can come back' - and we honestly thought we would. In LA we were miserable: my parents had booked us a hotel which had fallen through - not what we needed on our first night away. The Holiday Inn was horrible to us and didn't make us feel any better about the fact that we'd just left home for eight months. We then got our connecting flight to Fiji.
Once we arrived, we had one drink - and it all changed! Suddenly it was the most exciting thing in the world: we were exploring islands, catching local buses to remote villages, getting lost and having to hitch-hike back - the fear was gone and we were having the times of our lives. We were to spend a large proportion of our gap year in Australia - a mixture of work and travel. On arriving we stayed with friends with whom we fell out. Then we moved to a flat where we slept on a sofabed together surrounded by mess and often drunken Aussies - and absolutely loved it.
We got jobs in a local restaurant and explored the Harbour City. Our advantage was that we were looking round Sydney as locals - we were working and living with Australians so we developed an entirely new lifestyle. We got working visas from the UK before we left, which were valid for a year and cost less than £100. You could work anywhere you liked, but for no longer than three months at a time.
After a while we travelled to Melbourne, through the middle of Australia and down the east coast. Here we became tourists, staying in hostels, scuba diving, bungee jumping and drinking excessive amounts of beer with fellow Brits, Swedes and Danes. It was a 36-hour bus journey from Uluru to the east coast, and this was hot and uncomfortable - but seeing the Rock and Kings Canyon in central Australia were definitely worth it. I would recommend the journey to anyone.
In fact, all the trips were worth the money, although it was when we were travelling that Laura and I had our only low points. Moving around all the time, never unpacking and not having time on your own can get you down after a while. If you want to slump, there are people in your room. The communal areas are always heaving and, after a while, we both found this quite hard.
Once back in Sydney, we didn't want to leave. We had intended to go to New Zealand and San Francisco, but we extended our time in Oz instead. We got our old jobs back and went skiing with friends - we'd fallen in love with the place, and with some rather cute surfers too.
Laura and I left for these travels in February after leaving school, and had both been working in the interim. We had about £4,000 saved each, after our flights. Some of this money was in an Australian bank account; my father was in charge of the rest, both to pay off my credit card bills and to top up my Australian account when needed.
We both kept budget books, which we updated weekly with all our receipts and payslips. As soon as we arrived, we started work - even though we had enough money stacked up. If you can work in a restaurant or bar, the money is fantastic. It's paid like a temping job would be in England, and if you work weekends and late at night, the money increases even more. You earn enough to live very comfortably, and get the added advantage of meeting the locals.
However, the money we saved while working in England and in Sydney went quickly up the east coast. The hostels were expensive - although dorms are cheaper - and your coach ticket is a hefty sum. We bought a ticket that allowed you to jump on and off a specified route, which was brilliant as there were no restrictions.
Obviously we found sneaky ways to save money. We'd catch coaches overnight: a good night's sleep without the cost of a hostel. But you don't realise how much you can spend when travelling. During the day you constantly paying for food, drinks - and entertainment. We had both vowed that we would never worry about money or not do something because of cash restrictions as we may regret it later. We decided we'd prefer to come back to England with vast overdrafts and then pay them off. Australia isn't cheap, but there are opportunities to work all around the country. It could be done more cheaply if you bought a car and camped, but being two girls on our own, away for the first time, we decided not to do it like that. Looking back, we would have been absolutely fine.
So what did I think of my year off? I still regret not doing something a bit more 'worthy'. On the other hand, on organised gap years, people tend to get mothered and it's really just like a long school trip to somewhere far away. A lot of people explored more countries than we did, adding south east Asia to their itinerary. This would have been fantastic, but we needed to work to keep our money topped up, and we now have the advantage of knowing a city inside out, having lived there as residents. There's plenty of time to go elsewhere and we preferred to explore places properly.
We gained experience that was invaluable at that time in our lives. We learned to be independent. We sorted out everything from jobs and taxes to remembering to buy groceries and wash our knickers. We also learnt to budget. When I got to university it was obvious who had been away for a year - we had loads to talk about and we no longer acted like kids just out of the classroom. Those who had come straight from school were the ones throwing up everywhere at the freshers' ball.
And the cons? Coming back home I was a nightmare. I was so miserable - I'd met someone in Australia and fallen in love and I wanted to stay in Sydney with him. I announced that I did not want to go to university: I wanted to travel more, return to Australia, and defer a year. My parents had a few words to say about that. My mother thought that I was being such a lunatic that she hid my passport, thinking that I would run away in the night - and I was so mad I probably would have. Laura was so depressed when she got back that she hopped on a plane and went back for another six months. The feeling of complete despondency and disorientation on return was horrible.
The other problems included my mother sorting out my university accommodation, which meant that I found myself in a university hall full of the most awful people. I also put on two stone while I was away, thanks to vast quantities of beer and 9p-a-packet noodles eaten in gargantuan quantities. But, all in all, my gap year was one of the best times of my life. As for the Australian love of my life, he fell by the wayside after about the second week of university. He came to visit for Christmas - but you'll have to ask my parents about that, as he ended up staying with them for three months.
o Katie graduated in physiology from Bristol University last year. She now works in advertising.
