Graduate college and get a “real” job—that is what society, parents, teachers, and even you yourself, expect as you trudge through term papers, final exams, and whatever else is necessary to earn a degree and prepare you for the “real” world. The problem is that no one ever defined the “real” world for you during those high school and college years. At best, you had the vague notion that the real world consists of paying bills and working a steady job in order to support yourself. What job, what bills, and what exactly you are supporting is up to you.
After you reach the arbitrary number of hours and years that are supposed to have prepared you, you graduate and you must decide on a career ready or not. Panic ensues and suddenly you‘re scrambling for any job or heading back to the security blanket of school for some masters program or another (granted you have the money to do so). That panic and chaos and uncertainty—that is the real world they never reveal to you during your structured academic world filled with clear cut deadlines, assignments, and class periods. They (meaning those out there who have survived this transition from school to work) also never mention that when the economy happens to be in a recession, your hard earned degree, your A’s, your membership in countless school organizations, don’t really count for much. When did you ever hear your teachers tell you, “sorry, there just aren’t enough A’s to go around; you’ll have to settle for a C instead”? Well, that’s how the real world talks.
At least that is the experience that my friend Caitlin (a social work major) and myself (an English major) discovered shortly after graduating from college. I dodged “real” life for my first year out of college in 2008 by teaching in China. She dodged her first summer out of college in 2009 by volunteering for Barack Obama’s campaign. Ultimately, though, we both had to face the inevitable search for a full-time job in America. Three months after returning from China, countless hours of research on the computer, and dozens of resumes sent, I finally landed one of those “C” jobs—a place best described as the McDonald’s of photography studios. Qualifications included a high school degree…and that’s it. Great, I could have had this job five years earlier before I spent thousands of dollars on college. However, I needed a job to buy time until my next move, so I took it. I met Caitlin soon after we began working there in November.
After a tortuous Christmas season of 80 hour weeks filled with taking pictures of screaming children and families of the Griswold variety, we had both had enough of Americana and its real jobs. We needed to get out before it was too late—before we reached the point of regret and nostalgia for the carefree days of our youth when people our age did things like backpack around Europe. Uh oh…there it was, our solution, the thought that would get us through this job, that energizing something to make us feel alive again: We had to backpack around Europe. I had lived in China for a year. Caitlin had lived in Brazil and Malawi for two summers. We were familiar with that nagging wanderlust, but somehow we had missed the most important initiation into the world of the traveler—the Eurotrip.
The only catch: We would have to quit our jobs because we would never accrue enough vacation time to make the trip worth the initial cost of getting there. It took us about two minutes to weigh the pros and cons, and Europe won. The seed was planted so there was no way conservative reasoning would win out. Sure we would have a steady, “real”, job if we stayed, but at what cost to our happiness and sanity? We started our planning in January and spent every off day and lunch break bursting at the seams with excitement as we planned our trip to Europe. Whenever work was stressful, we just comforted ourselves with counting down the days until our departure. I would stare hatefully at the two-year-old throwing a tantrum before I even began taking pictures, and Caitlin would walk by, smile, eyes widening with excitement, and say “one more month.” We felt like secret agents planning some covert operation as we discussed our trip.
I hate even calling it a “trip” because it seems like so much more. This “trip” is our way of sticking it to a corporate America that doesn’t value its employees. It is our way of saying no to acceptance and yes to change. It’s our carpe diem moment that says we realize life is short and sometimes our life decisions need to be reevaluated for our own happiness. Unlike my experience in China, I have no illusions that I will emerge from this trip a more job-worthy person or that my life will have changed in any significant way, but I do know that I will be fulfilling a lifelong dream…and since when do dreams count for nothing?
This dream begins May 4th when we leave for Dublin. Our loose itinerary includes Dublin, Brussels, Bruges, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Venice, Florence, Nice, and Barcelona. We fly home on May 27th from Dublin. Along the way, we hope to use this blog to post short “eurograms” about our adventures, mishaps, and discoveries as we trek through 7 countries in 23 days.
Some may say we’re crazy or irresponsible for quitting our jobs to backpack through Europe, but we say we’re just living life to its fullest…and those people should try it sometime!
~Lori
