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Take Sabbatical 101-lecture hall U.S.A.
National parks
By Tod Woolf
Daily photographer Tod Woolf
and a friend bought a used van last
spring and set off to see the country.
They 've been from Boston to
Florida and now plan to drive west.
They've managed to spend little of
their own money by doing
everything from working at Disney
World to selling advice on New
York's Fifth Avenue. Tod sent in
the following record of their jour-
ney from somewhere in Florida.
Whether studying literature or org-
anic chemistry students learn at
a fast pace in Ann Arbor. The Univer-
sity offers a fine academic education,
but sometimes learning about life
doesn't leave time for living life.
For those who cannot go to the
bathroom without feeling they're
wasting pecio=s study time, start planning a
"student sabbatical." Students cannot
CRISP for a sabbatical, but they can
tell their counselor they will be out of
school for a year.
With the proper traveling techniques
and preparation anyone can take a year
off and travel the country without
parental financing. Since October I've
been living on the road instead of a
dormitory and learning on the streets
instead of a classroom.
I have been traveling with a friend
from, of all places Michigan State
University. The woman at the
American Automobile Association was
a little stunned when I requested a
MEDICAL SCHOOL
IN SANTA, LUCIA, WEST INDIES
Now Accepting Students
in 3 yr. fully accredited U.S. model
M.D. program. For info and application
please contact
ADMISSIONS OFFICE
SPARTAN HEALTH SCIENCES UNIVERSITY
P.O. Box 1012
DETROIT, MI 48231
Tel: 313-963-7262
12,000 mile Triptik. A triptik is a series
of road maps selected for each in-
dividual trip route and bound in a pam-
phlet by AAA. I highly recommend one
for anyone going a long way.
Our trip started in Detroit bound for
Boston via Toronto, then down the East
Coast to Florida stopping in small
towns along the way. We are *now
heading across the Southern states to
California and will return to Ann Arbor
in the spring.
We bought a used V.W. microbus and
stocked it with a propane stove, first aid
kit, many pounds of macaroni and
cheese, rice, spaghetti, peanut butter,
jelly, an extensive collecton of casset-
tes, and an assortment of books. The
food was purchased at bulk food store to
save money on staples.
We built a platform in the van for
sleeping and strapped a ladder for win-
dow washing and a windsurfer on the
top. The van is crucial to a successful
trip. With a van you only need a parking
lot and curtains to sleep anywhere. We
sleep in the parking lots of the most ex-
clusive hotels in the United State.
But what about career goals? The
average life span is about 75 years.
That leaves about 40 years for a career.
In the scheme of things 39 years instead
of 40 will not make or break a brilliant
career.
Don't worry about your parent's ap-
proval either. My traveling companion's
parents were ready to die when he first
mentioned the trip, but they soon got
used to the idea and now enjoy hearing
reports of our adventures. The older
people we have met on the road have
either taken time off to travel or regret
that they did not.
A trip of this type would seemingly be
out of the average student's financial
reach. However, we've been on the road
for three months and still have the
money we started off with because we
work along the way. By preparing
inexpensive food and sleeping in the
van expenses can be kept low. So far we
have made money washing windows,
working at Walt Disney World, cleaning
apartments, painting, selling instant
color photos, renting out our windsur-
fer, and offering "good advice" on the
streets for 25 cents.
Even if you make all the spending
money on the road it is important to
start with some. Cash can be built up in
the spring and summer in Ann Arbor,
especially with a low-cost sublet. This
money will be needed for car insurance,
repairs, equipment, and emergencies.
When purchasing a van remember that
it probably can be sold for nearly the
same price after the trip.
Our working experiences have been
some of the most enjoyable and in-
teresting parts of the trip. For example,
we went to Disney world a few weeks
before Christmas and applied for a
seasonal job sweeping the streets. The
benefits included free access to the
Magic Kingdom and EPCOT Center.
The job at Disney World allowed us to
see how the corportation applies the
concepts taught in introductory
Psychology to make its employees the
finest hosts in the world.
Ingenuity can create other oppor-
tunities for income. Particularly suc-
cessful was our instant color photo
business in which we meet people while
making money. We bought Poloroid
film and frames in bulk and have sold
photos in New York City, Boston and
Key West.
Perhaps the most outrageous enter-
prise was the offering of "good advice"
on the streets of New York City. We
stood on Fifth Avenue with a poster that
read "Good Advice 25t - 2 years
college experience."
The funny part was that some
asked serious questions and we gave
earnest (if not good) advice on topics
ranging from marketing to personal
problems. We also got a couple dates by
advising two young women to ask us out
for a drink. Such ingenuity is not
required, however, because most every
city we've been in has help wanted
signs.
A student sabbatical does not offer
the security of lessons planned out by a
professor. But traveling offers its own
lessons taught by the people you meet.
Everybody has a story to tell.
We met a reformed alcoholic who
now works for the Salvation Army. A
retired record producer in Miami
Beach said he once told Barbra
Streisand she would never make it. The
skill of talking to people of all walks of
life may atropy at school, yet it thrives
on the road.
A year off from school also offers
time. Time to visit relatives who live
around the country. Time to become
more familiar with cities than the stan-
dard quick trip would allow. It is also a
chance to scout out places for graduate
school or a career. There is time to read
books that would have remained on the
shelf in Ann Arbor. The most striking
difference between this year and my
year at the University has been the
time to enjoy life without the pressures
of exams and due dates.
A year on the road can enrich an
education and a life. A long journey of-
fers fresh green grass each week. But
my time away from home also makes
me appreciate the people and the place
I left behind. It'll be nice to be back on
the diag.
almost make the trip not worth it,
and we've all seen so many pictures of
the geysers anyhow. The real gems,
though, are the high mountain parks -
Rocky Mountain, Grand Teton,
Olympic, Glacier, and the North
Cascades, where you can plunge in
glacial lakes (for only a few seconds),
scramble through boulder fields,
glissade on summer snows, and walk
the flowery alpine near the Continental
Divide.
The parks' interiors have more sur-
prises than just the unbelievable views.
In Glacier National Park I wore bells on
my pack to warn bears of my in-
trusion, for they sometimes devour
careless hikers, or eat their food, as
they did mine (three days' worth) in
Rocky Mountain National Park. The
Tetons brought me face to face with
black bears, moose and their calves,
marmots, blizzards, and - from a safer
distance - avalanches and rock slides.
Like "scenic view" signs, national
park signs are deceptive, too, for the
parks are only the smallest fraction of
scenic, hikeable land and draw
thousands of tubby living-room cam-
pers that make the land seem less im-
pressive. Less crowded but equally
beautiful scenery can be found in
National Forests, near small ski resorts
like Vail, Big Sky, and Alta, and beside
little towns sleeping against mountain
slopes, like Ooray, Colorado, Lander,
Wyoming, and Mt. Shasta City, Califor-
nia. Rangers, climbing-store sales
persons, and locals take the place
national park trail/highway maps to
reveal the little-known hot springs and
hike-able fourteen thousand foot peaks.
One summer found me in the Univer-
sity's introductory geology program
Wyoming. Students of the program live
in tiny aluminum shacks and inten-
sively study geology with their hands
and hammers on the mountains. The
course takes students to geologic
features all over Wyoming and also into
surrounding states. We collected
dinasour remnants in Colorado, hiked
in the Tetons, skinny-dipped in the Wind
River, and fervently celebrated on cold
mountain nights. Though sometimes
too heavily laden with rules and struc-
ture, the program is a great oppor-
tunity for experimental learning and
for understanding the science of what
makes the West beautiful.
Climbing is the West's greatest op-
portunity for adventure. As a misty-
eyed religious climber and veteran of
many western summers and winters, I
I~iZ~iiLIL~iI~i~ . I IT
(Continued from Page 4)
can prescribe no better drug (and
believe me, it is an addicting drug) for
the bored midwesterner than a good
climb to escape from the tyranny of flat
land. Climbing zealots like me (I know
there are more than a handful out
there) can bop from campground to
climbing hut, from -the Climber's Ran-
ch to Mt. Shasta's Horse Camp Lodge to
Yosemite's Camp Four. Boulder, too,
overflows with climbers looking for
partners.
For the uniniated, aspiring, and
potential climber, there is a host of
climbing schools located in mountain
towns across the country. Everyone has
heard of %national schools, mainly Out-
ward Bound and the National Outdoors
Leadership School, which offer trust-
worthy but very expensive introductory
programs. More budgetable and c
equally satisfying are the smaller, local Y
schools such as the Tetons' Jackson t
Hole Mountain Guides and climbing
schools in Boulder and Yosemite. Vir-
tually every ski town offers a climbing E
guide service in the summer. In ad- 0
dition to being more affordable, these
programs offer alternative styles .
tailored to your interests, from grueling °
bust-your-ass ascents to mountain
photography seminars to basic lear-
ning-the-ropes courses.
Romping the western outdoors
requires some roughing it and biting
the bullet, but it's all part of the fun.
Simple, meager meals of bread,
cheese, and fruit can taste better than
the finest gourmet dish. Classic peaks
Weine gazes off into the valley in the Tetons.
like the Grand Teton, Mount Owen, and
Mount Shasta have had me dangling
over thousands of feet of empty space,
wretching with altitude sickness, and
peeling like
in the end,
summit and
of miles, I ki
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4
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