Traveling is something that everybody does in their lifetime. When you travel, you open your mind and visit areas that you never thought you would ever be. I'm from Illinois and most of you reading are as well, but there is a whole world out there, waiting to be explored.

In college, you can study abroad and visit a different country. More importantly, studying abroad can challenge you educationally, culturally, and even emotionally. I say emotionally because you'll know right away if you like the country or not.

When I was in middle school, I loved to travel. I would take my bike out and travel to other areas in my town where I've never been before. Eventually, when I was in High School and was doing band competitions and choir conferences, we would travel all the time. My favorite place is Florida, even though the pizza isn't that good. Food is another perk of travel. You'll very easily find out what kind of foods you like and maybe implement those in your diet before you return to Illinois.

So why do all this in college? Well, it's a great educational experience for you and it's a great experience overall. In the future, I would like to go to Europe and maybe track down some family over there. I've traveled to Tennessee, Missouri, Michigan, Florida, and Indiana.

Tennessee was the fun state for me because everybody was a southerner down there. Their accents were different than my Chicago accent, so I had to become accustomed to that for about a week. Tennessee even taught me how to drive in the mountains. We had a big town and country van, and it was tough navigating ourselves through those mountains because, yes, they are very steep over there. We stayed in Pigeon Forge, and we went to Dollywood for a day. I call it the Six Flags mini because the rides are pretty great over there. I would definitely go back just for the rides. The food there was pretty good too.

The other place I went to was Missouri, what I didn't like about Missouri was that it was a real hilly area. Too many hills. Nothing was even, I would be at the hotel at the top of the hill while the restaurant was three or four hills later. It was also dangerous driving around Missouri too because since it was hilly, it was just cliffs the whole way through. So you really had to watch your driving in both of these states. Nonetheless, it was still nice to get out of Illinois.

This past summer, I went to Michigan. Michigan was pretty nice because Lake Michigan is a really nice place to relax, chill, and walk around. You can do everything over there. Especially when you're in Saugatuck. In Saugatuck, there are houses called lake houses, which are nice to look at. How do you know that they're lake houses? Well, look at the yachts sitting outside. Some homes were pretty huge. It creates the question, who can afford that big of a yacht? Well, I would love to be best friends with those people.

Either way, travel to somewhere in college for the cultural and educational experience. That's all I have to say, meet someone, make friends down there. I'll be going to Louisiana next summer in 2018, so I'm excited about that, but I really want to go somewhere this year, don't know where to yet. But start planning now to continue educating yourselves and expanding your horizons.