By Adam Wright | Contributor
Two years ago, I made a crazy decision. It was the end of the fall semester, and one of my best friends looked at me and said we should drive somewhere. Confused, I asked him what on earth he meant; for one thing I had a final the next day, and for another it was already 8 p.m. Where did he want to go? Wal-Mart? No, he meant a road trip with no destination. My other friend agreed, and about a half an hour later, I found myself in the front seat of a car, class notes in hand, driving down the highway with two of my best friends and indefinite road ahead. I will remember what happened that night for the rest of my life.
In a poem I think stands on the verge of becoming a platitude for our generation, Robert Frost once wrote, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." While there is wisdom in this, it is much better to experience the road less traveled by first-hand than to simply acknowledge it from a distance.
Too many of us get caught up at Taylor in rote lifestyles, myself included. We wake up, go to class, eat, study, grab a drink at Starbucks, hang out at an open house, sleep, repeat. But I encourage you to break the trend. Our time in college is so limited, and I am personally finding myself in the middle of my fourth and final year of it, wondering, like everyone else, where the time has gone. Don't let it go to waste.
And I know, that must sound horrendously millennial of me; "Don't let your time go to waste," "You only live once," etc. But I mean it from the depths of my heart. Most of the greatest memories I have from living on this campus have come from ridiculous decisions made at 2 a.m. in my dorm room. They have come from crazy ideas that sounded illogical and fictional, but instead of laughing them off, I acted.
Now, I'm not telling you to go on a road trip during finals, but if really you want to take that road trip you've been dreaming of, take it (here's a tip: have your things packed and in hand when you wake your friend up for it in the middle of the night; they will be much more likely to say yes). When you want to study, go to that random diner a couple towns away that you found on Google a few minutes ago. Explore Upland, the town we live so close to but never experience because we're always driving a half an hour to get somewhere "better." When you're walking across campus, step off the sidewalks, take a different path. I can personally promise you those experiences are worthwhile-they will make all the difference.
