I certainly wouldn’t expect my kids to wander randomly round the country but as my eldest two graduate from college this year, I do wonder if (like many of their friends) they’ve sometimes been too narrowly focused on career objectives. COVID hasn’t helped either with travel and year abroad experiences severely curtailed.
I took a lot of time to travel in college (four summers with a month of interrailing in Europe plus several lengthy mountaineering expeditions) and then had two months traveling round the world on my own before starting a job, whereas S has a great job starting two weeks after graduation and seems fine with it. Several of his friends even decided to graduate early because there was no JYA and not much point in staying in college just to take more remote classes.
Have your kids taken time to “find themselves” through travel or other experiences before, during or after college? Did they feel they missed out on things if they started a job straight away? Are you concerned that the pandemic means they’ve missed out on things that should have been part of their college experience?
My S has done quite a bit of traveling —he’s mid-30s. It took him about a year to get security clearance and then time between that and having his orientation, so he had some time to travel. He’s traveled since he started work as well. He’s traveled to many places I haven’t and seems to enjoy it.
My D hasn’t traveled as much as S has. She’s early 30s. Her health conditions and limited pocketbook are large parts of the limitation.
Since the most recent generations are probably less well off financially and face greater financial challenges than their parents’ generations, that is likely the reason for increased focus on career objectives. “Finding themselves” is often a luxury for those with money, so when people have less money, they are less likely to be able to afford that.
I think that’s perhaps true in the last 20 years or so regarding travel (although I do know a few millennials that did months-long backpack trips abroad) but after reading the article my takeaway is that the men cited undertook their various adventures and experiences precisely because they were lacking in funds (and seemingly uninterested in secondary or higher education); resulting in the particularly long and varied lists of random jobs and military service. I’d hazard a guess that most parents wouldn’t be supportive of that sort of perceived aimless existence (excluding the military service) nowadays. And maybe those actors’ and writers’ parents weren’t either but it was more of a live and let live attitude back then?
I do agree with the author that parenting styles and risk tolerance have changed over the years. I think back of how often I was out of my house growing up (and during college) and my parents not only had no way to contact me, they did not expect to. As a general observation, parents are much more involved in their children’s lives, setting up guardrails of a sort, that precludes the type of random wandering discussed in the article.
My Ds are very interested in traveling. One did a year abroad her junior year and one started her college experience at a UK school but transferred back to the US due to COVID among other things. They’d both like to travel as much as possible. My S on the other hand did one study abroad and that scratched his itch. He just graduated, took the summer off to hang with friends and started working in September. Maybe he’ll develop the travel bug as he gets older. I never had much desire to travel when I was younger but ever since reaching my 40s I’ve really embraced exploring the world. I’m hoping to get back to it once COVID cooperates.
Not amongst the kids I know. Their families are vastly wealthier than those I grew up around. We would work in a factory or other menial job all summer to earn the money to travel. But they will save money from summer jobs rather than spend it, or seek internships that support their career aspects (and may even cost money for rent) rather than living at home to save money and taking a job that pays a decent wage.
Desire for future financial security may be a motivator in making career oriented choices but what I’m seeing is not simply a question of lacking money.
Do those families tend to travel together? I wonder if wealthier kids don’t feel the need to wander because they have opportunities to see the world as they grow up. Maybe because it’s readily available or seems more of an ordinary or expected experience a bit of the allure and mystery of it is lost?
That might well be a big part of it. Though there are many destinations that kids won’t have gone to on family vacations but are interesting to explore for a young adult (eg more challenging countries in Asia or Latin America). On the other hand, if they’ve grown up with family travel being about nice hotels, then basic backpacker accommodations may not appeal so much.
And I do think there’s a much higher level of paranoia about places being dangerous. I was quite happy to do things (eg solo hikes in remote areas, hitchhiking, camping rough, with no one knowing where I was) that would be frowned on nowadays.
Interesting. Mine certainly traveled. I encouraged language learning and travel and growing up with family scattered around the globe, they had known examples of people living in far flung places. One D did two Rotary Youth exchanges, learning functional Czech and then was in Peru as a gap year, solidifying Spanish. She has lived in France 3 times, and now teaches French. She was in PC as well.
S lived in China for 3 years in the heady days before the Beijing Olympics, studied Chinese, saw much of Asia and S America before settling down in the USA. Other D has done research mostly in the Caribbean and lived in Israel.
Many of their HS friends have traveled extensively. I think it is part of our neighborhood and city.
The article mentions jobs requiring physical skills. One D has worked with her hands and back, learning horticulture and habitat management. The rest, not so much. English teaching is the passport to working abroad now.
The pandemic ostensibly put a halt to many of these activities. But some are still traveling. Digital nomads are the current adventurers, if electronically tied to a home base.
My D started traveling without us pretty early. First school church trips, then school trips, then with friends and study abroad. She’s an avid hiker and camper, and very adventurous. She’s planning on taking another month between graduation and full time work to travel.
Even without the travel, I think she’s still interesting
I agree that seeing and experiencing other places/cultures makes people more interesting. However, I’m not sure doing so during college years is necessarily beneficial for the students. I’m among the minority who think college study-abroad programs are mostly costly boondoggles. Few of them are good academic fits. My S has opportunties to do these programs in London, Zurich or other interesting places, but we decided even before the pandemic that he wouldn’t participate. Why spend months out of his short four years away from his college that gives him the best education? He did travel with us before college to other places in the world and he can do so again on his own when he graduate (he was actually going to go to Australia on his own in the summer of 2020 but the pandemic interfered with his plan).
Interesting. My 22 yr old S (oldest) is very much in to travel. Some of this may have been founded on our various family trips out west (national parks) when he was younger. He studied abroad in Spain and visited many countries while there. His senior yr he and several friends scraped enough bucks together to RV and have had two great RV trips out west. 6-8 of them camping throughout the Pacific Northwest one trip and Arizona / Utah the next. I imagine they will continue this in the future while they are still single. Hopefully forever as they take on really cool hikes and go exploring. Was interesting they did one trip in the winter and were hiking these beautiful spots in Utah in the snow (about 10-30 degrees outside but they loved it).
My kids grew up traveling, with us and with others or on their own, and still love it. They had no need to take a gap year after college to find themselves.
One studied abroad (twice) during college. The other two didn’t.
All three are very interesting people and well acquainted with the world - not just the US (and not just resorts as we pretty much never stayed in those).
IME whether one travels or not does depend upon how much money they have. Some join the military to travel. Few (none I can think of actually) set out with no money planning to earn their way.
Having money doesn’t mean they travel though. Some just don’t care for doing so. Not having money means they don’t travel unless work related.
To me, travel does make folks more educated and interesting because they’ve experienced more. This assumes they don’t just stay in resorts, of course. One can read books and watch videos, but actually seeing and experiencing fills in so much more in the mind.
No idea. It really bugs me when people assume you are as interested in their travels as they are and whip out their phones to show pic after pic. My eyes glaze over before the first one. I just have zero interest. Might as well be looking at a coffee table book.
The first time our son stepped foot out of the contiguous U.S. was last summer when the Army sent him to Guam (which is still U.S). We’ve never traveled with him. He grew up in Arizona, yet none of us have been to Mexico. Pleasure travel is just not part of our lives, no desire. For seventeen years, DH traveled 100% of the time for his job and is quite over it. I traveled a lot for business, too, and would rather have my eyes poked out than get on a plane or stay in another hotel–anywhere.
But, as to the adventure part, our son has always avoided his comfort zone, first as a kid choosing a Scout troop known for its challenging outdoor program, then opting to leave for boarding school at 14 and, later, deciding on a service academy for college. He definitely considers his choice of the military as a detour before starting whatever his civilian career will eventually look like. He felt deeply called to service, and though we tried to convince him that there are many ways to serve without voluntary conscription, that uniform just felt right to him. The exposure to many kinds of people and places and immersion in a world so different from how he was brought up challenges him daily. He has served two years and has seven left. He will emerge a much wiser and more broadly experienced person for this adventure than if he had taken the usual civilian path. I certainly wouldn’t consider him uninteresting.
I grew up as a foreign service brat and have generally been open to travel and adventure. I took a gap year before college and lived with a French family. I got a grant to research and photograph low cost housing in London, Paris and Berlin for my senior thesis. I took another gap year before grad school lived in a camper and traveled around the country photographing fire houses. I had a grant to pay for that too. I spent five years in Munich when dh did a post doc there, and we spent a few months in Hong Kong for a sabbatical. We took our kids on trips to the Caribbean, France, Germany, Scotland and Japan. One has the travel bug the other does not.
The one who likes traveling got a grant his freshman year to talk with nuclear arms experts in Pakistan and India. He spent his junior year in Jordan. He took a delegation to Moscow and Kiev when he worked for the International Crisis Group and he’s in Japan now with the Navy. I think he’s a pretty interesting kid, but he did graduate before the pandemic.
I love to travel, but don’t do it that frequently. I don’t consider myself particularly interesting.
I find some of the most interesting people I know haven’t much traveled at all.
Travel is a really weird barometer of finding someone “interesting” and “interesting” is a really weird barometer of finding value in a person. I can think of plenty of people and especially public figures who are well-traveled and interesting who I dislike very much. I’m sure you all can too.
The authors’ emphasis that travel is necessary for making someone interesting reminds me of the tired arguments from some pro-sports people, that sports is so good at teaching teamwork, achieving goals, etc. As though people with no interest in sports are at a disadvantage for learning such things.
I also don’t understand the authors’ focus on the change over time. Weren’t people in the past more likely to have remained in one job for an entire career? And with air travel less accessible, probably less likely to have the traveling credentials to make them “interesting”?
Interesting to me is learning about someone’s food preferences, hobbies, relationships, their humorous wit during normal conversations, etc. I suspect I would find the authors to be cold and impersonal if I were to meet them.
A lot depends on what you do with your travel. Living in a foreign country is very different from being a tourist. Traveling to do research also tends to put you in touch with interesting people. The fire house project gave me a window into a whole world I knew nothing about.
My DD will have traveled extensively before starting her full time job, which I’ve actively encouraged — a couple months in Europe, Safari in Africa, a year in the Middle East, a year in Asia, a couple months in South America, and I’m gifting her a big trip after her MBA. I do think traveling makes people more interesting but more importantly, more culturally aware. I honestly don’t understand why, if able, someone wouldn’t want to explore this huge, amazing world we live in and explore other cultures.
Someone mentioned study abroad upthread as sort of a waste and I am slightly inclined to agree, as opposed to those precious undergrad semesters of intellectual intensity at a good school. The difference is whether something gets you actively engaged in another culture and language, whether as a homestay or doing volunteer work. Dorm living in a major city and hanging out with other Americans when not in school, is not an immersion experience.
My previously monosyllabic son was placed in a volunteer English teaching job with street kids in Quito, and he engaged, found he loved it and went on to do that in China. D did a bit of a wasted semester academically on the Island of Martinique, as she was isolated in a dorm where other students didn’t engage and the academia was far from the standards of her LAC, though her French improved. Other D traveled around France after study abroad working on farms and it was in some ways more helpful in gaining fluency than the formal study abroad program. World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms | WWOOF
Well said.