Define Your Road in Life with Roadtrip Nation
October 24, 2009 | Alicia Ostarello
Join the Roadtrip Nation Movement!
Whether you’re a senior or a freshman (or even just a human), you probably have a case of graduation jitters; after college comes the real world (unless you are turboing off to graduate school with Sonic the Hedgehog speed), and if you are like 75% of your classmates, you have no idea what you want to do with the rest of your life. (And heck, for that matter, a lot of adults out there are in the same boat you are, regardless of age and lack of student status.)
Call it the quarter-life crisis or call it sheer terror – the fact remains that you’ve been told to do something with yourself after school. But what if you do not know what that nebulous something is? Enter Roadtrip Nation and their Green RV.
To know what Roadtrip Nation is, it helps to know the story behind them:
In 2001, three friends, Mike, Nate and Brian, were fresh out of college and not sure what they wanted to do with their lives. The paths they had been following were someone else’s dreams for them – a doctor, a lawyer, and a consultant. They rescued a mechanically shaky RV from being put out to pasture by Brian’s family, painted it green, and traversed the country interviewing people who inspired them and had made a living doing what they love to help discover how to create a meaningful life outside of the traditional boxes they felt they were being squashed into.
While on this original Roadtrip, the friends realized that their experience was bigger than them…That a lot of people could benefit from the stories they were hearing from people like former US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner and a lobsterman in Maine. Their conversations with all of these individuals inspired them to pursue what they loved and what gave their life meaning, and they then began the process of finding a way to share their Roadtrip with people who were also searching for how to find their own road. With this in mind, the Roadtrip Nation Movement began.
Fast forward through the next 8 years, and you’ll find:
- A grassroots documentary, The Open Road.
- The book Roadtrip Nation: A Guide to Discovering Your Path in Life
- An annual PBS series called Roadtrip Nation (which sends teams on the road in a Green RV to conduct their own interviews with people who inspire them)
- An on-going Indie Roadtrip program that offers grants from State Farm to anyone who wants to hit the road.
…And most recently RoadtripNation.org, a non-profit organization committed to developing educational resources for middle school, high school and college students so they can start defining their own road in life. That’s a lot of swings of the hammer for Mike, Nate, and Brian, who continue to pursue their mission of helping people venture onto the open road to build a life upon values and meaning.
What does all of this mean to you, the college student? Well, Roadtrip Nation is looking for the next generation of road trippers to put their wheels to the road in the summer of 2010. Imagine road tripping across the country in a Green RV interviewing people who have defined success on their own terms. People who wake up and love what they do each and every day. Apply to be on the Green RV, and this could be your summer.
I have to admit, I’m a bit biased towards Roadtrip Nation. I find their show to be incredibly inspiring, and the wisdom of the people they interview to be invaluable towards my own life and my own pursuits. I dream of a life that is about writing, helping people, education, health and creativity, and until recently, I was not sure that kind of life existed–I felt caged into doing what I thought my parents wanted for me, or worse, working in a cubicle. It wasn’t until I found myself without a job that I began sifting through choices about the rest of my life that might actually make me happy because I had nowhere else to go. I’m finding that it just might be possible to construct a life around everything I believe in and love; and I want this feeling for everyone else who has ever felt lost, hopeless, or undefined.
If you’re not convinced, read their Manifesto below, and check out one of my favorite interviews with Craig Brewer here, in which he talks passionately about what he loves, the risks he took, and how failure is inevitable, but so is success. And you can explore their interviews based on your interests on their website as well.
Here is the Roadtrip Nation Manifesto:
So, what do you want to do with your life?
“You should be a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, a consultant…blah, blah, blah.”
Everywhere you turn people try to tell you who to be and what to do with your life. We call that The Noise. Block it. Shed it. Leave it for the conformists. As a generation, we need to get back to focusing on individuality. Self-construction rather than mass production.
Define your own road in life instead of traveling down someone else’s. Listen to yourself. Your road is the Open Road. Find it.
Find the Open Road.
I hope you’re at least a little inspired. So if you want to block out the Noise of your life this summer and find your own road in life, steer your browser towards www.roadtripnation.com.
