On the Road With College Students

John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley is one of the great travel narratives. It is an account of Steinbeck’s journey across the country with his dog Charley, in his truck with a camper van. Steinbeck set out to find out “What are Americans like today?” He took his time and drove slowly. He stopped in small towns, spoke with locals, had contemplative drinks around campfires and sipped his coffee in the morning. Steinbeck’s journey was about the opposite of my recent experience traveling overseas with college students.

My travels with college students took place in Greece and Turkey across the span of two weeks. Steinbeck had a lot of time to himself. We were almost always all together. His companion was a dog who sometimes sighed and sometimes barked but largely kept quiet. Our bus contained students who could and did nap but were quite capable of expressing themselves verbally. Steinbeck drove himself; we were driven. He kept his pace slow; we wore ourselves out. He was his own guide; we had professionals. He was somewhat indifferent to where his journey might take him; we had a packed agenda. He was in America; we were overseas. We got, in many ways, different things out of our trips. But we were both edified by our experiences.

Steinbeck learned a good deal about America. I had already been to most of the sites that we visited in Greece and Turkey, but I learned a good deal about some young Americans. I learned who requires iced coffee to get going in the morning. I learned who cared most about historic cannons in town squares. I learned from my students how Kim Kardashian takes a selfie. I learned more slang than is good or useful for me.

A great deal of evidence demonstrates how much students benefit from travel study trips and study abroad semesters. Many students benefit from the more experiential learning style. Learning about Athens in the classroom and then walking around the Parthenon is a special and memorable opportunity. Students come back from overseas trips with more exposure to the rest of the world and often an increase in confidence. For semester-long programs, students can return with enhanced language skills. Study abroad can offer an employment edge. There are so many reasons for students to study abroad. For faculty, the benefits are different but just as real.

Faculty leading a trip overseas should already know quite a bit about the subject and location, but the experiential side of travel study for faculty cannot be had elsewhere. Typically, faculty and college students interact mostly in the classroom. We stand, or pace, at the front. Even if we practice engaged learning, we are largely in control of the environment. We speak mainly on subjects we know about. It can be easy to fall into a pattern. We might even offer some of the same lectures and same examples year after year.

Outside of the classroom and outside of the country, the situation is different. We are not always in control, we do not always command the room or the bus and we cannot operate from a script. Travel study trips show us our own pedagogical limitations, which can be somewhat hidden behind the lectern. Trips force us to be more spontaneous and to stretch. They can also make us more real to our students. Something about being on a bus together all day and trying to scrounge up change for access to a bathroom rehumanizes, or at least deepens the human element of, the student-faculty interaction.

Even better than the opportunity for us and our students to see faculty members more clearly is the opportunity to see our students more clearly. In classes, we might care about and try to engage our students, but they are still students in seats rather than individuals whose food preferences you learn if you spend two weeks in close quarters. In fact, being up close with students can be a reality check about how little we actually understand them. It can be very easy to assume that, especially if we have taught for a while, we get students and know how they think and operate. Traveling with 18 of them can break that illusion in the best of ways.

Travel study takes us out of the laboratory and into real life. That grounding is good, but the reality you gain is often the opposite of disillusioning. Seeing our students learn about Greece and Turkey in person and watching them get excited was a way to rekindle the enthusiasm I had when I first saw these places in person—at their age. Traveling with college students is a powerful reminder about some of the best things about working at a college or university. One of those things is the seeing and sharing the transformation that can accompany acquiring new knowledge and experiences.

The age gap between us and our students is not just about cultural references and gas prices. Some might think faculty members have the advantage when it comes to life experience, but we often do not. It is very easy to interpret the world around us according to what we have personally lived or seen up close. As we get older, we start to expect less and less from life. Our horizons seem to be shrinking. College students—even those with difficult backgrounds and real challenges—are often the opposite. There is a sort of inborn optimism about being 21. Even those who think the world is a mess recognize that their future is full of possibilities. The future may well turn out to be great. We can gain a lot from being around people who feel this way. I was recently asked if college students are annoying to me. I was able to honestly answer that they usually are not.