To Travel, To Learn

I grew up traveling throughout the United States with my family. The experiences I received from these travels endowed me with a love and appreciation for my homeland, and they sparked a yearning to love and appreciate places beyond home.

When I entered my senior year of high school, I had no idea that three months later I would decide to attend Hillsdale College. My hometown is a 60-minute drive through rural southwest Michigan to Hillsdale College’s campus. The spirit of adventure fostered in my youth led to an almost unconscious bias in my school decision-making: no way, I thought, will I attend a tiny school in a city one hour from home. I loved home, but I also knew from travel that there are sometimes good reasons to reach further.

I did eventually decide on Hillsdale—I was recruited by the cross country coach for running, and after my visit, couldn’t help but feel something was different at Hillsdale, that I’d leave there a better and fuller person—but resolved to indulge my love for travel over a summer or more, or otherwise to do missionary work abroad after graduating. These were good plans, but they felt far off and abstract. Needless to say, when I received a pamphlet in the mail advertising the chance to visit Italy with Hillsdale College even before I became a full-fledged Hillsdale College student, I quite literally jumped at the offer. By February, I had not only secured my spot in the study abroad program, but had made arrangements after the program to visit friends in Austria, Germany, and Spain.

That summer, as an 18-year-old, I spent five weeks basking in unqualified wonder at finally seeing beyond the scope of my American travels, two of them with Hillsdale College in Italy visiting cities like Rome, Venice, and Florence. If it weren’t for the pandemic, I would have spent the following summer backpacking Thailand and the next summer studying abroad in Poland. This was all spurred in part by the incredible adventure that the Hillsdale high school summer travel course gave me. I still revisit the journals and pictures I kept on the trip and find new inspiration and ideas to bring into conversation.

The experience I had abroad aided my spirited desire to know and love what is beyond the scope of everyday life. However, I would be remiss to overlook another aspect of this experience. I mentioned never planning to attend Hillsdale College—in part, because I thought it conflicted with my desire for adventure, but also because I didn’t actually know what it meant to be a Hillsdale College student. Prior to attending Hillsdale, I thought learning happened when a person experienced something new, and so I wanted to travel so I could keep learning. I didn’t account, though, for the infusion of extraordinary experience that can come from other things: literature, art, science, philosophy—the things I study in rural Hillsdale. Experiencing reality through different lenses is a part of learning—of expanding yourself—and can happen from anywhere. I found it in Italy as an ambitious 18-year-old, and am grateful to find it now daily as a Hillsdale College student.

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Meg Scheske comes to Hillsdale from Sturgis, Michigan, and studies philosophy and religion. She runs distance for the Hillsdale College cross country and track and field team, and volunteers at the local St. Anthony’s Catholic church. You’ll find her with an oat milk vanilla latte with cinnamon on top while taking a break at Penny’s campus coffee shop.