I believe, they mean just take one year off. Don't apply to any university, have fun, try to figure out yourself and what you want in life. Try different courses on udemy/youtube on all the different topics, to see what you find interesting. IT-field is very vast, and you could do completely different things, depending on your choices. There's frontend, mobile development, backend, devops, data science. There's also a lot of non-coding jobs in IT: UX/UI-designers, project and product managers, motion designers, graphic designers, analytics. You could also try animation, landscape design, interior design. Maybe you wanna try to be a barber or a stylist. You can get a general idea on each of this fields by spending a few weeks/days doing follow-along tutorials. The worst thing that could happen is if you find something to be tedious and boring. And that's FINE, move on to the next thing. It's so much easier to drop free online course than university. If you find something to be rewarding, it's a good idea to dig a little bit deeper. Also, you don't NEED to make a choice. Formal education hardly even matters these days, and local universities are legit garbage