Today is Tuesday, September 18, 2012. And I feel more excited about this potential idea than I have about many things in my life. I have grown up in San Diego, CA living with my family of 5, in an upper middle class neighborhood. I never had to worry about paying for things by myself, was able to participate in many activities, went on several vacations and was sent to private school for 8th grade through the end of high school. Even now while attending University of San Diego, I do not have to worry about greatly burdening my family. While I know that tuition here costs a ton of money, and that my $10,000 a year scholarship only puts a small dent in the total cost of attending USD, my parents are able to pay for it without me having to go into great debt. This is something that I am truly grateful about and have learned from close friends is not something that is very common, especially in these economic times.
Anyways, being that it is my senior year in college I have spent much of time trying to come up with a "life-plan." Trying to answer the usual end of college thoughts. "Who am I? What do I want to accomplish with this life? How can I change the world?"
I started college thinking that I wanted to go to medical school and become a doctor. However, as time passed by my thoughts and ideas began to change. As someone once said, "in life we do things, some we wish we had never done, some we wish we could replay a million times in our heads, but they all make us who we are, and in the end they shape every detail about us. If we were to reverse any of them we wouldn't be the person we are today." What I have personally gone through, and the experiences I have had in college have left me curious to learn not only more about the world, but more about the United States. I want to experience the life of people in other states, even other locations within the US.
This prompted me to come up with a crazy idea. After acknowledging that this idea was crazy I opened a google map and started to route my itinerary. The goal was to hit all 48 states in a road trip to (define all ages). About two hours later, I had come up with a rough route of my trip, 14, 308 miles. With this as my jumping block research into each state must start and slight reroutes will happen as I make sure that I hit the cities I want in the most logically, mile saving order. After all 14,308 miles turns out to be about $3,400 --too much for a student without a job.
