10 Reasons why Traveling is an invaluable experience for you!

School is probably the best place to expand our academic knowledge, but when it comes to learning about life, there is nothing more enriching than traveling. Whether it’s the people we meet or the things we see, traveling provides more valuable life lessons than school, mainly because instead of being told something, we experience it.

Here are ten reasons why traveling is a more valuable learning experience than going to school:

1. Forces you out of your comfort zone

School is a place that we usually feel safe at. we know and feel comfortable with all the people in the school: the teachers, the friends, the parents, and other school workers. They all usually live in the same city, and hence they share a very similar culture. They speak the same language and they eat the same kind of food as you.

Meanwhile, traveling means new foods, cultures, language, people, and places to explore. It pushes us out of our comfort zone. And it is a good thing, because it will help us grow as a person.

2. Teaches you better time management
   

Sure, we also have deadlines in school. However, the stake is much higher when we are traveling. If we are late in submitting our assignment, we can just go to the teacher’s office and ask for deadline extension. But In our travel adventure, getting late will cost us lots of money. After all, we can’t ask the plane to wait for us. It’s a good thing though, because we will learn to better manage our time.

3. Allows you to see and experience new ways of living

Nothing is more eye-opening than surrounding ourself with another culture that chooses to live their life completely different from ours. Well, traveling will give us a new perspective on how we live. We might be able to see the photo of that from a textbook, but experiencing it ourself can only be done through traveling.

4. Gives you the chance to reinvent ourself

At school, our friends and teachers can see us in a certain way and pigeonhole us into a personality type that we know is not who we truly are. Maybe we are seen as a misfit at our school. Well, travel can give us the blank white sheet – the chance to start fresh and explore the other sides of our personality.

5. Helps you in building confidence

You’ve just traveled to a new country, far away from home. You have learned a new language, and used it to haggle over prices in the local market. They’re all things you didn’t know you could do before. With travel, come challenges. And the more challenges you take on, the more confident of yourself you become.

6. Improves your planning and organizing skills

How should I organize my itinerary? Where and when is the major attraction going to be held? How can I get there (by bus, taxi, or walk)?

There are lots of things we need to plan to have a great travel experience. we need to organize our trip so that we have a place to stay and transportation taken care of. Traveling will help us sharpen our planning and organizing skills.

7. Makes you a more interesting person

Seriously, how many of you love to tell weird and adventurous stories to your friends, and feel better because you feel like you are an interesting person?

Travel is an opportunity to do things we might not otherwise get to do. Maybe we were almost bitten by a lion while doing a safari in Africa? Or that time when we were almost killed by a bull in “Pamplona’s Running of the Bulls” (Spain)? Most of these amazing stories will come from the time when we traveled, not from our time in school.

8. Teaches you gratitude

Traveling often means we will meet all sorts of people. Traveling to a poor country can make us realize just how much we actually have. We will meet (and make friends) with people who have so little in their life, but are living their life happily.

It’s easy to forget just how lucky we are. We live in a world full of abundance and wealth and often never fully appreciate what we’ve been given.

9. You learn social skills much better while traveling

You will meet lots of new people at hostels, guided tours, bars, cafes, monuments, and buses while traveling. Perhaps they are local people or other fellow travelers. They can be good people, bad people, introvert / extrovert.

The fact that we get to meet them all will definitely improve our social skills. Compare that to staying in school where we will meet the same people all the time, and we can see why traveling is a more valuable learning experience than school.

10. You learn how to be comfortable with uncertainty and the unexpected

If there’s only one thing we can be sure of while traveling, it is that trips don’t always go according to plan. There are plenty of things that can go wrong to either derail your itinerary or force you to change your plans.

Travel will teach you that the unexpected is rarely as bad as you think. Often, they are just small obstacles that can easily be overcome. Eventually, you become accustomed to uncertainty and the unexpected challenges that come your way. In fact, you will start embracing them and learn how to overcome those challenges.

About the Author

Hailing from the Pink City, Jaipur, Pooja is currently pursuing B.A. LLB (Hons.) from National Law University, Jodhpur. She had also worked for various organizations like Pratham, PUCL, Samajik Arthik Vikas Samiti in Jaipur. Her areas of interest are playing chess, watching television, painting, reading novels, listening to music.Being a foodie, she never misses an opportunity to taste new dishes and her favourites include Aloo Chat, Gol Gappe, Bhelpuri and Dal Baati. Travelling and discovering new places is her passion. She believes that Travelling, is something everyone should do at least a couple of times in their life just to get a different view of the world. Travel has definitely affected her because she just loves to see other countries cultures.