Kyle DeNuccio, right, on Lake Batur in Bali, a gap year stop. CreditKyle DeNuccio

I am currently interviewing candidates to join us for summer internships, and possible university gap year projects at Chan Chich Lodge. Most importantly the projects will focus on various food-related initiatives, some longstanding goals and others more in the spirit of random variation. We have had plenty of awesome interns, as well as wondrous wanderers and sometimes sabbaticalists join us here and there for more than two decades, and we feel qualified to claim that this fellow (who reminds me a bit of this fellow) speaks truth:

Independence Days: My Perfect Imperfect Gap Year

By KYLE DeNUCCIO

Midway through a lackluster freshman year at the University of San Diego, I called my parents and told them I planned to leave school after the spring semester.They took the news pretty well considering they had just shelled out more than $50,000 in tuition and living expenses at one of the ritziest private universities in the country, a university where the gym bears the name of the dietitian Jenny Craig and some dorms feature an ocean view. Here, you could easily graduate unaware that 1 in 10 students at surrounding California State universities is estimated to be homeless.

I listened to my father’s objections as I walked to the west edge of campus, passing the university’s big, whitewashed buildings, its meditation garden and its infinity pool, before I reached a spot where I could see San Diego’s entire Mission Bay and, beyond that, the Pacific…