Vacation or Vocation: The Road after College

What's up peeps, the start of a new semester means the start of a brand new Ad Intern here at BG, which means you all can officially refer to me as AdIntern1! (just trying to keep it original). It might be the start of the school year for us college students but its my last semester at USD and finally that time to start having those nightmarish thoughts about what in the world am I supposed to do with my life as a college grad; work, travel, nothing, military, CONVENT?!? The conflict that most young people have is whether it's worth dedicating the rest of their lives to a career in order to satisfy the life they want around them, or doing something out of the box and satisfying the life they want within.
Here is what I decided..

The Dilemma: A Successful Career takes TIME.. No Time for Travel
In the last four and a half years of college, you wouldn't believe how many times I've heard the phrase "It's so hard to get jobs in this economy" and "these days the job market is SO competitive for recent grads".. it's depressing and I don't like it. It's obvious that these phrases are grilled into our heads in order to motivate us to work harder and do more to stand out, but it leaves you with the bad taste that maybe life is going to be an endless competition to get the best job and continue to try hard to stay ahead of the game. Unfortunately, I totally get it. Bad economy means that every incoming grad is desperate for the best job they can get and if they don't then they settle for something less. The more grads settling for lower positions, the harder it is to prove that you deserve to be at the top. But how do you differentiate yourself enough to get that dream job?? Sure, you can get lots of work experience by interning (aka what I'm doing right now) and getting good grades, maybe even involving yourself in a club or two, but then you finally land the job before you graduate and your life transforms into a 40 hour work week and so on.

It may happen or it may not; but I don't want to look back one day and say "I should have seen more of the world back when I had TIME."

The problem is that insecurity we have of being left behind in this cookie cutter road; go to school, get a job, start a family, die. If we actually gave ourselves the time to go explore what's out there, we may not get the job because applying to a job as "unemployed" is very different to applying to a job as a "student".. right? The scary employers might look at us as lazy for taking some time to ourselves before dedicating our lives to them.. right? I don't think so.

The World is Too Small.. and Life is Too Short
Between traveling with my family, studying abroad twice, and interning abroad for a summer.. I've been to roughly 40 countries around the world, and yet I still feel like I've only grazed the tip of the ice burg. Through travel we learn humility, we become multi-cultured, and we have the ability to comprehend just how small the world really is and how beautiful the people who live in it are. We live in a globalizing world and the more that time goes by, the more connected we all become. Simply put: if an employee decides to look down on the fact that you took some time to see the world before joining their organization, then it may just be time to find a new place to work.

Rough It and Do Good.. It's Good for the Soul
One thing I've learned from traveling is that it doesn't matter if you are in the Amazon, on a Safari in Africa, or deep in rural China.. you've gotta rough it. The sweatier, the dirtier, the more disgusting the food is, and the more uncomfortable you are.. then the more amazing the experience will be. A Hilton hotel gives you NO insight on what the culture of a country is, or what any of the people living there are like. Staying at a gross hostel.. you see a different side. It's something real, and it's worth doing. Going to China doesn't mean seeing the Great Wall. It means staying in a village and getting to know what day to day life is like somewhere far from where you know. Of course, you can't rough it forever. the older we get, the more difficult it becomes to make all of those hikes and sleepless nights and long days with little food; but as a young person we can. We can take it. We can endure these experiences, and they could very well define who we become.

Now, at what point in our lives do we have enough time to travel without the responsibility of a job and are perfectly capable of roughing it here and there without getting into too much trouble..? RIGHT NOW

I think that if you have never traveled on a large scale before then now is the best possible time to open your horizons and see what's out there.. and if you have already traveled and you think it's time to get a job because you already got enough worldly experience: WRONG. Then you have the perfect chance to do even more; go live somewhere, volunteer, do non-profit, give back to the world for a few months before you dedicate the rest of your life to yourself. There are problems in the world that no one will ever hear of and mostly because they aren't encouraged to learn about them first hand. Think about it: looking back and saying to yourself "I remember those months I spent volunteering in Africa after college" sounds a lot more interesting than someone who wishes they had done something like it. Yes, I could probably get a job to start right after I graduate; but taking a puny little fraction of my life to keep the adventure going, I couldn't imagine a better way to start it all.

So there you have it peeps. My advice: GO TRAVEL. Go see new things, meet new people, do something for someone else and in the end it will be the best thing you did for yourself in the first place.

So come December, look out world, I'm on my way.