How Travel Changes You

A Remedy for Ignorance

It is a common belief that when you’re traveling you’re learning, but how does what you learn change you?

A traveler is different than a tourist. A traveler actively seeks out new people, opportunities, and experience while a tourist only travels to sightsee. The actions can be the same but the intention behind them makes all the difference in your personal growth.

As Americans, we have a nasty bug in our society called ignorance. Many Americans lack awareness about basic world knowledge and geography and have no motivation or desire to learn. We are content living our lives thinking only about ourselves and things that relate directly to us. It’s hard for Americans to care about monsoons or the slave trade in Libya or the extinction of elephants because none of those things directly affect them.

Mitchell Lawson, a Study Abroad coordinator at Marquette University talks about some of the ways he has been changed by travel and how he has seen students change. “The professional benefits of traveling are enormous- resume build up, languages, cross-cultural communication skills, foreign markets; but more than that it opens up your curiosity about the world”. Travel also makes you comfortable with ambiguity. Not knowing the where you are, the language, how to get to a destination, and other common traveling…