David Hogg Is Taking A Gap Year Before College & His Reason Is Kind Of Perfect
David Hogg, a 17-year old Parkland shooting survivor and organizer of the popular protest March For Our Lives, has solidified himself as one of the leading voices in the ongoing calls for gun control reform. He's graced TIME magazine, has been interviewed on several TV networks and most recently, has made national headlines for his college rejections. According to several reports, Hogg has been denied by at least three universities, which has everyone asking where David Hogg is going to college. Well, instead of dwelling on the bad news, he's chosen to take a gap year before heading off to college so that he can dedicate his time to political causes, CNN reported.
Hogg's mother Rebecca Boldrick told CNN on April 9 that, even though he's been accepted to several schools, including the University of California, Irvine, "he will not be going to college this year because he's decided to take a year off and work on the midterm elections." She also revealed that one of her son's main objectives in that time is to get new voters to register, as well as "get[ting] people to vote" in general.
The news comes just weeks after it was revealed that Hogg had been denied by at least three California universities: University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), according to The New York Post.
Questions of where Hogg would go to school have made headlines recently. After reports about Hogg's college rejections surfaced, on March 28 Fox News host Laura Ingraham tweeted out a link to a story with an incredibly petty caption that read, "David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates."
Many people felt that she was mocking and ridiculing the Parkland student over his rejections, which sparked a complete uproar on and off social media. As a result of Ingraham's comments (and Hogg's campaign for advertisers to drop her show), several companies decided to pull their ads on her show, showing that Hogg's influence is much greater than some people probably expected.
Aside from Hogg's impressive activism resume, which reportedly includes a 4.2 GPA and a SAT score of 1270, he previously shared that he wasn't sure where he'd end up after graduating from high school. On March 27, he told TMZ, “at this point, we’re already changing the world. If colleges want to support us in that, great, if they don’t, it doesn’t matter, we’re still going to change the world.” He's often echoed similar sentiments on his Twitter page, like on March 16 when he wrote, "Just got rejected from another college but that’s ok we’re already changing the world. Goodnight everyone." The comments show that he's completely confident in his abilities to effect change one way or another, with or without college, and I don't blame him one bit.
But he also mentioned that he was open to taking a gap year in a interview with Axios back in March. He said, “at this point, I’m probably going to take a gap year and I’m sure I’ll eventually find the right place for me. Right now I’m more focused on changing the world and the future of America.”
Before Hogg decided to take a gap year, he previously shared that he had interest in becoming a journalist or a filmmaker. It's a revelation that seems totally fitting because, during the Feb. 14 Parkland tragedy, he'd also used his cell phone to interview his classmates while the shooting was actually happening in efforts to get lawmakers to understand the severity of gun violence and mass school shootings.
On Feb. 15, he told CNN, "I want to show these people exactly what's going on when these children are facing bullets flying through classrooms and students are dying trying to get an education. That's not OK, and that's not acceptable and we need to fix that."
He continued, "If I was going to die, I wanted to die doing what I love, and that's storytelling. And this is a story that needed to be heard. ... At least our echoes, our voices would carry on and possibly make some action."
No matter where Hogg ends up, I'm sure that he'll be a major influence and inspiration to millions — heck, he already is. With the power to help spearhead such groundbreaking movements at just the tender age of 17, I'm betting that there aren't any limits to how far he'll go. And I can't wait to see what he does next.
