The case against traveling alone

Maybe MEJO 584 was really about the friends we made along the way

By Emily Gajda

If I’m being honest, I only signed up for this class because my friend told me to. I was planning to take a boring elective and an easy capstone as my last six J-school credit hours.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to travel. I’ve spent my past two summer road tripping New England and the American West, sleeping in my tent or my car and going where the wind takes me. The class sounded fun, and it was obviously a good portfolio builder for a young reporter.

The issue here is — I normally like to travel alone.

Something about eight or nine days with 25 of my newest friends didn’t sound like something I would enjoy the same way I would a peaceful morning alone in the Northern Rocky Mountains or the Utah desert. Plus, it gets hot in Puerto Rico, and I do not do well in the heat.

But the friend was a good one, and I’m graduating in May, so I registered for the class anyway.

Packing was a flurry of stress and confusion while I tried to figure out what to bring for such a unique trip. I was going to be talking to fishermen, lawyers and community organizers during the day and getting mojitos with my colleagues each night, and I don’t have that much wardrobe range when it comes to heat.

What are you even supposed to wear when you have to look professional but the temperature is above 85 degrees?

By the time I packed and got on the plane, I regretted every single choice I had made. I brought the wrong shoes. I didn’t bring enough shorts.

It did get very hot.

I didn’t enjoy it in the way I normally did traveling.

But that is because I enjoyed it so much more.

When it started raining, Dylan and I jumped in the pool. The two times I needed different allergy medicines, Sam and Preston each walked with me. After a long day of work, I could count on laying on a lounge chair at the hostel to chat with coaches and hear how all of my new friends’ days had gone.

I didn’t see everything I had hoped I would while I was in Puerto Rico, but I did get to watch Pat Davison, a photojournalism professor, drive someone’s car out of a ditch in El Yunque National Forest.

When I needed a ride back from the town of Loíza, where I spent my days reporting, program-alumnus-turned-coach Alex Kormann and I sang “Rivers and Roads” by The Head and The Heart as we passed beautiful beaches, fruit stands and palm trees.

I didn’t get to see the Puerto Rican mountains, but I got to walk four miles and across a bridge with Ryan Thornburg, a journalism professor, and three of my friends when no one would pick us up in Piñones. On the other side of that bridge, after a nine-hour outing that was supposed to last from noon to 3 p.m., I drank the best beer I’d ever had (no one get worried, I’m 22 years old).

I got closer to the people I already knew, and I made new friends who I never would’ve connected with otherwise.

Someday, I’ll go back to Puerto Rico either alone or with a smaller group of people, and I hope when I do I can go back to Loíza where I reported or out to the mountains where some of my friends worked. I hope I can go back to see some of my sources and thank them again for letting me try to tell some of their stories.

Regardless, I am thankful for the friend who told me I should sign up for the course and for being able to finish up my time at Carolina with an unforgettable trip, some great new friends and an incredibly fulfilling opportunity to tell a story I otherwise could not have told.