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In the spring of 2015, I took a semester’s leave of absence to live in the Wudang Mountains of China. To me, it was an exciting adventure, but many of the peers and professors that I told my plans to did not share in my optimism. Their responses went along the lines of, “Are you OK? What’s wrong?” “So you’re not going to graduate with us?” “You’re almost done, just stick with it." I definitely felt some degree of social stigma for graduating late, and also repeatedly encountered the notion that my leave of absence was a last resort that indicated something was wrong in my life.

Yes — leaves of absence can be an urgent relief for some great challenge in our lives. But I’d like to advocate for leaves as a way to restore peace before you go over the edge. Truth be told, when I took my leave of absence, I was not facing any major life challenges. Classes were becoming tiring, but not unmanageable. School was sometimes frustrating, but still generally good. To be honest, I was mostly just a little tired, and getting a bit bored with school.

The idea came to me when I was talking to someone that I met on OkCupid in New York about how they spent the last half year in India learning about Yoga. At that point in my life, my top three interests were: Chinese language, martial arts and Eastern religion and philosophy. Yet before this point, it had never occurred to me that I could just go to China and spend my time doing what I was actually most interested in at the time. In retrospect, I find it a little humorous that the idea of taking a break hadn’t even crossed my mind until that point.

Anyway, my semester on leave was definitely my happiest one so far. I lived with a community of about 20 people, who mostly only spoke Chinese. I’d wake up when the stars were still out to go on a run in the mountains and watch the sun rise. Every day, I’d have the same schedule: morning and evening prayers, several martial arts training and the rest of the time spent hanging out with the animals and other martial arts students.

We spent a lot of time hiking in the mountains, learning calligraphy, drinking tea, sleeping outside and just generally talking about life. The only instance I felt stressed the entire semester, was when there was a certain debate going on back at NYU Abu Dhabi, about removing student body status from leave of absence students.

Looking back, taking a leave of absence was one of the best decisions I’ve made on my academic path here. I feel a lot less stressed, and have much more energy and enthusiasm towards school. I look forward to my remaining time here and feel no rush to “get it over with” like I used to. Also, I feel the leave left me with a richer, more holistic education overall. A lot of my friends told me afterwards that they wished they'd taken a break, but because of the stigma surrounding it, they didn’t. It seems to me that highest cost of taking a leave is oddly enough, the social stigma.

Just remember, you can always take a break.