The concept of “wanderlust,” a strong desire for travel, fills our Pinterest boards and news-feeds. It shapes our Instagram posts, our conversations, and our futures. More than anything though, it upsets and discontents our hearts, which is ironic since the most prescribed cure for unhappiness is a road trip or backpacking vacation.
Don’t know what to study or where to attend college? Take a year off to explore. Going through a rough breakup? Cross-country road trip it is. Need to discover yourself or gain perspective? Take a week-long missions trip.
We wander, which leads to more wandering, and more wandering, as the insatiable desire for travel becomes a drug we cannot live without. One location is never enough. Trusting travel to satisfy us means that we must always be somewhere else. We pour time and money into experiencing the world, but find ourselves empty and unfulfilled, in search of the next big thing.
I know this because it happened to me. The day I learned there was more to the world than my house on a farm, I wanted to explore it. Western New York would never be enough, and Houghton offered me the opportunity to squash the “travel bug” with a semester abroad in England. My cohort and I saw historical sites, tasted new cuisine, traveled on the Tube, visited Ireland, and spent three months chasing what I believed was the key to happiness.
Then we came back, back to cows, crickets, and gravel roads. The open fields and dark woods that had fueled my childhood creativity became obstacles to experience. What was I supposed to discover in an empty cornfield? Boredom struck hard and fast, and with no car and no money, there could be no adventure. My purpose and happiness had become so invested in a location that when I was not somewhere interesting, I did not completely know myself.
To combat my post-London angst, I tried a 
“micro-adventure” challenge, which encourages you to find a tiny adventure within a 10 mile radius every day for a week. On the second day, I visited a park in my neighborhood, and as I watched little children run around on the open grass, I found what is lost in a travel-centered world: imagination. The children did not need a real mountain to climb or castle to defend, they were already there in the middle of an open park.
Adventure is about perspective, not location. A plane may take you a thousand miles from home, but if you never leave the hotel room, does it matter where you are? Attitude can make the trees in my backyard the Amazon rainforest, a school playground an ancient fortress and the Sahara Desert just a big sandbox.
Of course, traveling is not necessarily wrong. In fact, the love of traveling stems from the same healthy desire for exploration and discovery we need to change our perspectives. However, the thrill of travel cannot be what we build our lives or our cultures on. If it is, we risk missing out on the beauty of everyday life, as well as defining a well-lived life, and well-traveled life. Purpose and satisfaction are not found in a different location. They are found in being content with where we are, because until we can delve into where we are, we will never truly appreciate where we are going.
And now SGA is at the point to ask, what is the role of SGA on Houghton’s campus? We’ve mastered the basic duties of our members, although there is always improvements to make. These duties include: overseeing clubs, providing committee representation, cultivating spiritual life initiatives, representing the student body, and putting on SGA specific events.
The Guest Professional Dinners have been sponsored by the Vocational Center and Career Advisement Office (VOCA) since the spring of 2014. The events have included speakers from various professions, many of them Houghton graduates. “The goal of the dinners is to expand students’ view of the working world,” said VOCA director Kim Pool. She said, “The [speakers] share the story of their vocational journey exposing students to real-life issues, [and] opportunities.”
See You At the Pole is a worldwide event with a long history. The first See You At the Pole was a grassroots gathering held in 1990 at a Texas high school, when ten students gathered around the flagpole in defiance of their school’s ban on public prayer. In following years, the movement has experienced a vast expansion from its original purpose as a religious liberty protest, and now defines itself broadly as an event “committed to global unity in Christ and prayer for your generation.” See You At the Pole events now serve as an opportunity for students and faculty on campuses across the globe to come together in prayer for their schools and nations, and draw in students from Germany, Ecuador, Indonesia, Japan, Nigeria, and dozens of other countries.
The physical impact of the shift is immediately seen in regards to housing, as Marc Smithers, Assistant Dean of students for residence life, observed. “Roth and Shen are essentially at capacity this year,” he noted. Spear, observed the increase in male enrollment, while acknowledging the “disappointing” corresponding shift. “Female enrollment is down or flat,” he explained, comparing this year’s number of 174 to a previous three-year average of 185. Spear nonetheless positively noted “three years of growth among first year enrollments” overall, with numbers creeping up from 223, 238, 244, to this year’s 247.