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POINT: After Graduation, I’m Going To Take A Year Off To Travel, by Marley Riggs, ‘23
Brown has offered me a world-class education, one which has provided me with an unrivaled global perspective. But while I’ve learned about the world, I’ve yet to really experience it. That’s why, when I graduate this spring, I’m going to do something bold: take a year off and travel the world.
I know that I plan to come back to the states to work, so this could be my only real opportunity to travel for more than a couple of weeks at a time. And in this next year, I’m not going to apply to jobs or to grad school but rather immerse myself in the rhythms of this amazing planet, taking in diverse ways of seeing the world as I see it for myself.
Come the summer, I may be in a bustling spice market in Jakarta, at a yoga seminar in Bali, or on a hike in the Alps. Maybe I’ll fall in love with a local surfer boy at a bar when I live out of a hostel in Lisbon. The possibilities are as endless as the globe itself.
I may not know where my itchy feet will take me, but what I do know is that when I come home, I won’t be the same girl who left home.
COUNTERPOINT: After My Daughter’s Graduation, I’m Paying For Her To Travel, by Juliana Riggs
Let’s be clear, when my daughter Marley graduates from college, I’m fully funding her little vacation. I think it’ll be a nice experience for her to putz around different countries, and don’t tell her I’m saying this, but I’ve really enjoyed not having her around, and I’m not dying for her to come back home.
Also, love her to death, but why is she going around telling people she’s paying for this trip with her “internship money?” That girl made minimum wage for six weeks last summer. With her spending habits, that’ll last like five days, maybe.
I know Marley’s excited about her adventure, but she needs to chill about the “importance of exploration” before she even leaves. The other day she asked me why I didn’t take time after college to travel, and I looked her dead in the eye and asked if she thought Grandma would just have given me thousands of dollars no-questions-asked to go take shots with random Croatian men, or whatever she plans on doing, and that shut her up pretty quick.
Look, I hope she has an educational experience or whatever instead of just getting drunk in different countries. You know what, let’s just hope she enjoys herself. Marley recently told me she wants to pursue a career in “nonprofit radio” whatever the fuck that means, so this’ll probably be her only chance to travel for the foreseeable future.
Honestly, I don’t think this is gonna cost me too much, cause knowing Marley, I bet she’ll last two months tops.
