After fifteen months of travel, I returned to the United States ready to give American life another try. After a few months at home with my family, I moved back to San Francisco, the city I lived and worked in before traveling. I started looking for a job, looking for apartments, looking for new friends. I felt eager to re-enter American society, and pick up somewhat where I left off.
Within four months, I had changed my mind.
Published in Matador:
Somewhere along the way, we’ve all missed a crucial point about millennial travelers: though we may want to change the world, that doesn’t mean we have any clue how to do it. Instead, many of us lack both the self-awareness and research necessary to travel in a way that actually benefits the countries we visit.
Published in Matador:
http://matadornetwork.com/pulse/travel-industry-thinks-millennials-change-world-heres-reality-check/
I wonder if we’d see more women taking the risk of travel, exploration and adventure if we celebrated it in the same way we celebrated marriage. I wonder if these badass female travelers were ever recognized for their bold daring as much as they were recognized for their choice of partner. I wonder if the reason we don’t see more women climbing mountains, flying planes, or simply taking time off to adventure on their own, is because we have convinced them they should be focusing on a different prize.
Published in Matador:
Very early in his career teaching in New York, Glenn Bunger witnessed a student getting called “faggot” in between classes, but he hesitated to respond. As a gay teacher who hadn’t come out to his students or staff, he felt hamstrung.
“I worried: If I get involved, what will others think? Will they associate this with me? Is my reaction right now really about me? Or about the student? I was always processing these questions and insecurities that prevented me from speaking out.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/12/the-plight-of-being-a-lgbt-teacher/383619/
In her novel Americanah, the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes immigrant ideology as “conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that somewhere else … hungry for choice and certainty.” Maybe this was what I inherited from my family: not a new nationality or country to call home, but a form of restlessness, a need for exploration, a constant longing for something more.
Discovering that my best travel moments came from the subtle, personal moments instead of the grandiose, materialistic ones made me understand that living contently required little. What I originally thought I “took for granted,” I now rethought taking at all.
“A recent article in The Atlantic reported that by the start of this upcoming school year, Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American students will make up more than 50% of students in our public education system, making white students no longer the majority.
We will achieve little in discussions about national standards and Common Core testing if we do not acknowledge these numbers and what they mean: our students come from very different racial and cultural backgrounds than they ever have before and these differences will largely influence how they learn in a standard American classroom. As we significantly alter curriculum through the Common Core this year, it is crucial that administrators, reformers, and teachers think about how curriculum choices will engage students of these backgrounds, and motivate them to succeed in a system that was historically built with a different demographic in mind.”
http://blog.edcite.com/2014/08/21/celebrating-cultural-differences-with-the-common-core/
“Travel creates time to reflect on these priorities and decide how our career choices can accommodate them. We understand that bumming around in our twenties for too long is irresponsible, but we also find it irrational to work unfulfilling jobs only to feel legitimate. And if we have the financial resources to pause, travel, and reassess, then why not take advantage of that privilege?”
“A Pew Hispanic Center study found that half of the Latinos who did not seek medical care had a high-school education, a third were American-born, and 45 percent had health insurance. This suggests that the Latino apprehension about healthcare goes deeper than issues of access. It also partially derives from a long history of preferring non-Western medicine, a cultural uneasiness with the American style of healthcare, and a tradition of privacy and individual pride that makes many Latinos believe we have no need to ask for help.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/why-many-latinos-dread-going-to-the-doctor/361547/
“The way we’ve pitched diversity in the past was all about what not to say, how not to discriminate. But it shouldn’t be about learning exactly what to say and what not to say. The goal is to put people in a learning space, not a scary place, and make everyone feel that this an exploratory, energizing discussion.”
Amanda E. Machado 