Final Thoughts

I am sitting in my office on an uncharacteristically slow Monday afternoon, so I thought I should finally finish this journal of my summer (as it is now September with October slowly approaching - where did this month go?).

It is hard to now start summarizing my thoughts about my trip, because it ended about 7 weeks ago (with those weeks being inundated with all things Res Life) and has been mainly pushed from my everyday thoughts.

Even now, it is hard to summarize what the summer meant to me. When school was starting here again and students came back, their first question often was "How was your roadtrip?" And while I mostly answered that question with an "awesome" or "fun", I really found that words couldn't accurately describe everything I did or felt.

I made this dumb looking collage with a map that Vil (my friend in New Orleans) gave me. I tried to add some postcards and other pictures to it, but it just ended up looking cheesy! And I am not sure if I will hang it up. Despite the lack of pictures that I took, I am perfectly fine with the small amounts of material items that I got from the trip.

What I do have are collective memories and experiences. My Aunt Terry described it best to me - she said that "[she] doesn't have a memory of certain places because [she] has never been there, and now [I] have the ability to connect with people on a different level". I didn't realize it when she told me this in the summertime, but this idea is so true. I have already had countless experiences of being able to connect with people because I have eaten shaved ice in New Orleans, spent the night in Gallup, New Mexico, been amazed at Big Horn National Forest, been to the Loyola Maryland campus, etc. And it's only been about 2 months! It is a great way to connect with people and share common experiences.

So, the trip started as a way to fill my 8 week vacation from work, grew into an opportunity to see old friends and new areas of the country, and ended as a personal growth experience that I don't think I could accurately articulate.

Thanks for reading this (I mean you, Mom, Dad, Aunt Terry, Uncle Dave, and random friends who I mentioned and thus had to check and see what I said about them). This blog started as a way to keep in contact with my parents and became a really fun way to share with others what I had been up to.

So, here's to the end of summer 2010, and who knows what 2011 will bring!

Joey