You have heard it a million times: travel. Do it now! Book a fight, cross the globe, open your mind and expand your world. And I am here to be yet another voice urging you to take that very small leap that will have larger effects on your life than you can even imagine. The saying goes, “Travel is the only thing you can buy that makes you richer,” (other than the lucky lottery ticket, but that’s a different story) and there have never been truer words. Being exposed to different places isn’t just about delicious food and beautiful scenery. It isn’t about falling in to hopeless love with a local or taking bomb ass Instagram pictures and racking in the likes. It’s about seeing the realities of humans who you’ve never imagined exist. Traveling teaches you that your tiny little world is just that – tiny and little. The world has 7.25 billion people but, holy crap, until you see them, you don’t really know that they are alive. And you definitely don’t realize the quality of the life you live until you see that of others.

I was lucky enough to spend time studying abroad and those three and a half months will forever affect who I am and who I hope to become. While you are young, the world is YOURS. I was on a plane to a different country every other weekend. I packed only for myself and worried only for myself. I cooked only for myself and trekked through cities by myself. Being young and untied to any individual allowed me the freedom to simply do what I wanted, whenever I wanted, however I wanted. Gallivanting around the European continent was awe inspiring, every step along the way. The sights and smells are enough to put any person in to a state of pure bliss. But for me, it was the people. During my stay in Sevilla, I volunteered for Gota de Leche, a non-profit organization that feeds inner city children breakfast and lunch during school hours. Week after week I would take the bus in to the school I worked at and would feed the children. And very soon after I began, I noticed a pattern. The children all had different dialects in their Spanish. Some were Moroccan. Some, Ecuadorian. All children of immigrant families who were hungry, innocent and craving attention. European cities are filled with families just like these. Not everyone has the ability to jet-set to unknown lands and expand their world. Some don’t even have the ability to ensure that their children will have food on the table each night. But being exposed to these people, seeing their struggle firsthand shakes something in you until it becomes unhinged. Life is so short and can be so painful, but it can also be so incredibly beautiful.

If you are lucky enough to be enrolled at a college that offers a study abroad program -- GO! This semester at your college is going to be the same as the next semester. But spending three and a half months hearing your heart beating in your ears, looking in to the lives of others, and living out history in the most historic of places, will alter you so greatly. Who do you have to answer to right now? We are students. And we are lucky to be students. We are children. We are siblings. But, ultimately, we are young and wild and for the most part, responsible only for ourselves. We NEED to feed our souls with the goodness of exposure. Life is experience. Living is an experience. We should all aim to make our lives as full as we can. If we let them pass us by, we very well could be watching our futures dissipate in to milder, tamer ones. And that would a waste of our time on this planet. So while we are young -- we should see the world and all of its glories.