In law school I once had this debate with a career counselor when she wouldn’t even discuss alternatives to traditional practice with me. We never saw eye to eye on the issue, but she made her position clear: save the passport for vacations.
She was wrong. Travel is an opportunity to do something rare and extraordinary. Too often professionals, especially we lawyers, get locked into thinking in straight lines. We believe that all paths to success have to look the same, and we turn that belief into a self fulfilling prophecy. Long term travel lets you do something different, something that will make you stand out from the pack. Every job opening out there will have a pile of applicants who slouched through an office, deferring their dreams of adventure in exchange for yet another year at an internship that will “look great on a resume.” Someone bold enough to have avoided this trap will stand out and in today’s economy, standing out is a good thing.
Travel also allows you to develop skills and stories that you would never learn in the office on a Tuesday afternoon. These things matter. When I interviewed to work at law firms, for example, we almost never discussed my legal background. What we did talk about, in every single interview, were my travels. Living overseas makes you a more interesting person and gives you a chance to do things you never would at home. Whether you’re building schools, picking up a foreign language or simply learning to live and work with people completely different from yourself, you’ll take back skills that every employer prizes. Interesting professionals do well, and they usually have more fun while they’re at it.
Finally, you will get a chance to show off precisely those parts of yourself that will take you far as a doctor, lawyer or anything else. It’s true, few interviewers will want to hear about your days drinking in Vang Vieng. They will, however, be very interested in the risks you took packing up and moving to Laos for six months. People have fairly few chances to showcase the kind of courage and self reliance that you find on the road, and employers prize it highly when they can find it. Carve out your own opportunities to show off creativity, ambition, courage or whatever else matters to you. Most of your future co-workers have spent their entire lives talking about the things they would, could and want to do. Your future employer is interested in a colleague who can turn that into something they did do.
Long term travel is simply good for you. It’s a cliché for a reason, no one ever died wishing they’d spent more time at the office. Go out into the world. Leave your support system behind and see what happens when you throw yourself out there to see what happens next. You’ll get stories to tell for the next twenty years and I promise, the folks back home are watching.
