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During the summer of 2015 I volunteered at summer camp in New York. I didn’t know anyone there. I had never been to New York before. While working here, we weren’t allowed to have our phones. It was isolation from the digital world. All the people I worked with created bonds with one another. Not the bond from sharing movie interests, watching vines together or just being in the same space on our phones. We made real connections with by having in-depth conversations, reading and discussing books, and working long hours together. That visceral feeling of creating a connection with someone you didn’t know three days ago, was not something I had truly experienced. It’s five years later and I still talk to a few of them. That’s the kind of relationships I want to have. I made another bold move in the summer of 2019. Driving 12 hours, from Cincinnati to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, was just the beginning of the journey. From May 18th to August 29th I worked at one of the world’s best known outdoor theatres, The Lost Colony. I worked as a costumer; sewing, dressing, cleaning, managing, and sweating through those 3 months. Working long hours day was challenging, and rewarding. All the wonderful people I met, the local culture, the coffee(!), and sunshine made all the blood, sweat, and tears worth it. I was pushed out of my comfort zone. Unlike in 2015 where I was in a room of 24 teenage girls, I lived in an apartment with 4 other women. Living semi-harmoniously in about 350 square feet of apartment, sharing one shower was a problem, but we all became very close with one another. All of us were from different parts of the Eastern side of the United States, and all so vastly different. Skin tones, accents, food preferences, activity level, personality, and religion are just the tip of the iceberg. Outside of our apartment there’s about 90+ company members in the same complex. With the mix of college students to 60 year old’s was the unique demographic. All with diverse personal stories from where they’re from, or what they do for holidays, to how they relax. I made it my mission to talk to everyone, and have at least one meaningful conversation to know about them. I had more intimate talks with coworkers I worked with closely, but I pushed myself to meet everyone else too. Some I know better than others but finding that niche of similarities was part of the fun. So, I’m 21, a female, white, and from Kentucky. I wear shoes, don’t have a country accent, and no horses. But I do want to learn about other people. I want to celebrate the differences, become aware of their struggles, be an ally to minorities, and be a mouth piece for their stories. Every young person wants to travel, but my reason is to learn and appreciate the beauty of the vast world we are given to explore. Whether it be for leisure or for work, going someplace new to envelop the rare experiences from that culture enriches the soul and deepens the mind. I want to be a vast expanse of knowledge through experience, not just from reading about it in a textbook.