Personal essay: Lessons from travel
Julian Rocha/The Hofstra Chronicle
Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to travel many times, both with family members and by myself. Earning my drivers’ license, graduating high school and turning 18 came and went without much fanfare, and going off to college did not feel like a true introduction to adulthood. However, what has felt like a true milestone is the experience of travel. I have learned plenty about myself, as well as the places and people I interact with, making the world a smaller place.
As a kid, almost all of my travel consisted of family road trips up and down the Northeastern United States, with gas stations and towns all around. Rather than beach excursions or grand sightseeing, most of these trips were spent with relatives, which I will always be grateful for. Because of this, I can feel at home outside the town I grew up in, which made the transition to college six hours away from home much easier.
My first time spending an extended amount of time outside of a city or a suburb was two summers ago, when my family and I flew out to Utah to visit various national parks. Eating cold sandwiches in towns with populations less than a thousand and staring into the burnt orange horizon showed me a different side of America, contrasting the endless greenery of Virginia and the hustle and bustle of New York.
Although I have learned plenty from traveling with my family, traveling without them for the first time provided a unique sense of adventure and opportunity for growth.
Over the summer, I traveled to Ireland to conduct research with one of my professors, but I had to fly out on my own. Landing in Dublin at 5 a.m. without cell service or a clue how long I had been awake was a strange experience to say the least, but as I would learn throughout my time in Ireland, I just had to adapt.
On the four-hour bus ride from the airport to where I was staying, my eyes bounced around from the cars seemingly on the other side of the road to the road signs, trying to visualize just how far a kilometer actually is.
As with my family trip to Utah, zipping along the winding roads in Ireland made me almost wish I were a postcard photographer, not a college student with too much luggage and not enough sleep.
Some of my fondest memories on that trip were spent sitting inches from the window at night, hoping the cell signal could last long enough for a FaceTime call, and wearing a hat and gloves in June.
I certainly lived nicely when I was there, but it was the personal growth that made both every minute on the phone and every walk down to the water worth the challenges.
Throughout the month that I spent in Ireland, I interacted with countless people, each of whom I could write a whole article on. From the foreman working on the mountain with stories about his time living in Philadelphia to the sweet, older woman in the used bookstore who plunged into the Atlantic every morning, these people made each day an exciting journey of its own.
Traveling has been the greatest opportunity as a student, as I have felt myself grow independent and even more curious about the world.
I’m not sure when or where I’ll travel next, but it has made me more curious about the people right here at Hofstra, each with a unique set of experiences and perspectives.
Perhaps that’s what made me join The Chronicle: the newspaper is a platform to share the journeys of others, as well as my own.
