Road Trip - The Fab Four

So this morning the girls and I got up, got ready, ate some delicious monkey bread (NOT bread made out of monkeys and went to Kelly’s church. Then we came back and had a delicious lunch of mac and cheese and wrapped up our filming as a team. Then, Sarah and I packed up our stuff and heading back to Messiah to drop everything off and so I could pick up my car and head home. Kelly obviously stayed at her house and Kristal’s parents drove down later in the afternoon from New York to pick her up. Sarah and I didn’t have any problems getting back to Grantham, except when we missed our first turn onto 80 West haha. Traffic wasn’t bad at all, and we had fun filming clouds and other things along the way haha We looked in the sky for clouds that looked like things…for example, we spotted clouds that looked like dolphins, whales (for you Kristal), and sharks…I’m not really sure why they were all sea animals, but oh well…Sarah and I told the camera that we had to leave Kelly and Kristal on the side of 80 West because of rising gas prices and our car being too weighed down haha. We made it back to Messiah around 4 pm and dropped the camera equipment and all of our paperwork off. Then I got in my own car, which I had left on campus for the week in good old D lot, and we headed our own separate ways. It was funny because before we drove into D lot I wasn’t sure if I could remember where I had parked my car almost a week earlier. However, when we got there my beautiful 91 Buick was the ONLY car in the entire parking lot haha so I didn’t have much trouble with that.

We had an amazing time on the road and we were able to meet some really fascinating people and see some really fun places. We learned alot of valuable information from the professionals we interviewed, and we are really going to take alot away from this invaluable experience. We were able to get five interviews on tape and we have one additional interview typed up (one professional did not want to be interviewed). We were on the road from May 15th-May 20th. We encountered alot of heavy traffic and got lost a few times, but we made it!

We want to thank the Career Center and Enterprise Rent-a-Car company for helping to make this experience possible for us. We were blessed with an incredible opportunity. We hope that our contribution will help other members of the Messiah community down the road in their vocational journeys and career development experiences, as it has helped us. We have learned about the importance of networking and getting your name and face out there in the professional world, as well as the importance of gaining hands-on experience in your particular field of study. The professionals also emphasized building relationships with those in your prospective career fields and being proactive in your educational journey. In addition, they all reiterated the importance of exploring and researching and making sure you know what field you’re getting into before you do so. They also talked about the importance of obtaining skill sets and not simply just gaining a degree. Finally, they emphasized making sure that you do something that you love.

This experience was a very rewarding one. We would definitely recommend that there be more such opportunities for Messiah College students in the future

So on Saturday (mid-morning) we dragged ourselves out of bed (or off the floor rather) and packed up our things and left our friends’ apartment at Drexel University in Philly. We headed towards Stroudsburg, where we planned to interview Phil Williams, a successful marketing professional, and Tim Malefyt, vice president of project development for Agrofresh, an agricultural research company. It was a beautiful day and we had a pretty uneventful trip to the Poconos. However, we did miss our exit on the PA turnpike, and seeing as there is an exit only every like 50 miles on the turnpike, we had to keep going for awhile, praying that there was somewhere further up where we get off that would take us to where we needed to go. Thank goodness there was, and we arrived at Kelly’s house, where we were going to stay that night, at around 3 pm. Then we got ready and headed over the Phil’s house to do our interview there. He lives in a very expensive gated community and it was fun to drive through the development and feel important We were able to meet Phil and his family (he has three adorable little girls and a lovely wife) and then we interviewed him on his back porch. It was a pleasure to interview Phil, and he had alot to share with us about his career. He has done a wide array of things in the business field, more specifically marketing. He has worked for the NBA, the New Jersey Nets, a razor company, and a bank organization. He did product brand development with these organizations. He just recently started his own marketing firm called The Brand Suite, and he is hoping to have four branches in his company. He will be looking to hire staff in the future. Two branches are going to be entertainment and sports. He currently is helping to launch a Korean face and body cream line here in the states and he is an agent for two up and coming musicians. Phil was very warm and he was very down to earth. He was down to earth, yet he is pretty important and knows alot of very influential people in the marketing world. It meant alot to us that he was willing to sit down and talk with us.

After finishing our interview with Phil, we spent a little time with his girls and then we headed back to Kelly’s house to interview her father. We were able to do some filming at the Delaware Water Gap and around the area and then we arrived back at her house. We sat down with her dad and he shared with us about his vocational journey. He has a very interesting job working in agriculture and he gets to travel 1-2 times each month to places all over the world. He has a patent on one agricultural development, and he used to work in plant research. Now, he is vice president of project development at his company. We really enjoyed talking with him. Afterwards, we had dinner and then watched all of our footage back from our trip. We were in hysterics half the time because we were laughing so hard at ourselves on tape haha. Then, we organized everything from our trip to turn back in and chilled the rest of the night at Kelly’s house. We went in her hot tub (yay!) and then we did a bit more crazy filming and then watched a movie. All in all, it was a very productive and fun day.

Well, today the four of us woke up around 6:20 A.M. at my house in Red Lion, Pennsylvania. We were all pretty exhausted after having gone to bed around 1:00 A.M. the night before, but we had three exciting interviews to complete in Philadelphia! After packing up all of our random belongings, grabbing breakfast, and saying goodbye to my parents, we Hit the Road for Philly!

After the unfortunate happenings of the previous day in Maryland and missing our first two scheduled interviews, we were praying that PA would prove less stressful. The drive into Philly was pretty hassle-free (which I was extremely thankful for considering I was pretty tired of getting turned around on almost every ‘95 road in Maryland the previous day). We reached South Broad and realized first hand that parking in center city Philly is not fun! After about 20 minutes of trying to find cheap meter parking, we just decided to drop off Kelly and Steph to head to our interview with Rachel Oring from Expert Events (we were NOT going to miss this one!) Kristal and I finally just gave in and parked in this semi-sketchy parking garage and then ran about 3 blocks to the interview. I really wish we had footage of us every time we ran all over pretty much every city we visited!

We got to the interview on time, and Rachel was actually a few minutes late because she brought her new baby (which was beautiful) to work; she is still on maternity leave. Rachel did not want to be filmed for this reason, but that was alright because Kristal speedily typed up her responses to the questions. The interview with her was really interesting and it was so obvious that she loved her career. Rachel placed so much emphasis on the importance of finding a job that you love, and it really inspiring to learn about her pathway to in finding her ideal career. Kelly has more to add on this point, which will be in her blog on this

After this interview, we drove to the apartment in which we were going to be staying during our time in Philly. My boyfriend Dustin and his two friends, Ben and Liam, go to Drexel University in Philadelphia, so they were gracious enough to offer us their apartment for the night. So, we drove to get the keys for the apartment from Dustin and then headed to The University of Pennsylvania for our following two interviews.

Our second interview was with Leslie Kruhly, the Secretary of the University of Pennsylvania. I am personally interested in the field of Higher Education Management, so I was pretty excited to talk to Secretary Kruhly because of her Administrative position in an Ivy League School. I feel as though I really got so much out of our interview with Leslie. Out of all of her very inspirational advice, she really prompted me to realize that skill sets are so much more important than specific majors when it comes to going into graduate school and even future careers. Her undergraduate degree was in History, but because of her ability to write significantly well, she was able to score a job writing for Reader’s Digest and ended up covering a story the Kent State Massacre, which led her to future openings and eventually she found her way to UPenn. She also explained the importance of getting involved early on so as to prepare oneself for graduate school. The University of Penn. offers a Grad. program in Higher Education Management, and she offered to help me get in contact with some people from the program. She was so nice and very personable! I am very grateful for getting to meet her.

After this, we met with John LaVoy, the Director of PENNCAP. This organization receives funding from the PA as well as from UPenn, and assists students from underprivileged backgrounds in getting into UPenn. He also provided some very useful information about how to network with people, as well as how to find one’s own place in fields which can be very broad, such as Higher Education Management. John gave us some suggestions on how to not pay for Graduate school, and he also shared some information about getting involved in programs and with professors that can help students in getting into graduate school. John was very willing to talk to us and was so down to earth. It was obvious that he was so excited about being able to help students that might be first generation college students to graduate with a degree from UPenn, knowing that their degree would change the course of their decedents’ lives.

After these interviews, we walked back to the boys’ apartment to relax after our three interviews. The boys were so hospitable and absolutely hilarious in entertaining the four of us during our stay. We made a nice spaghetti dinner and had a fun, relaxing evening with the boys and some of their other friends from Drexel. Then, we all settled into bed for our following day of interviews in Stroudsburg, PA!

Wednesday night we had this fabulous plan to leave our Super 8 room at 6:45 am on Thursday morning and arrive in Columbia, MD at 8 am in order to interview Ann Paxton, a government events planning recruiter. With our trusty directions from MapQuest in our hands, we headed towards MD 3 South and actually went onto the exit for Bowie, MD because MapQuest told us to! Due to intense amounts of traffic and our horrible sense of direction we ended up driving about 15 miles the wrong way. We had to stop at a Jiffy Lube and beg for directions…the man named Pete was very helpful and friendly and made our tiring experience a little bit brighter. So, after getting on the COLUMBIA side of MD 3 South we arrived at National Conference Services headquarters, which is BEHIND the Exxon, not to the right of it…apparently. Unfortunately we were about an hour later after our appointment and went in to apologize personally to the very lovely Ann Paxton, whose time we certainly did not mean to waste. When we arrived she was engaged in another appointment and we left her a note with the secretary, went outside, filmed a bit, and laughed at our stupidity. Little did we know that this was only the beginning…So sorry Ann!

After leaving Columbia, we headed towards Baltimore,MD which was a smooth ride on I-95 North. At around 11:00 am we parked near the Inner Harbor and decided to take in the sights and sounds of the Bay. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and our McDonalds meal was especially delicious. To add to the entertainment, Kelly was being stared down by a very handsome Naval officer, which kept us laughing during our later trials. After our lunch, we decided to head to the College Park to interview Dr.Bonnie Thornton Dill and Dr.Jack Blanchard, both faculty at the University of Maryland who graciously allowed us to interview and film them. First we decided to take the metro into College Park via the Camden Line. After about an hour and a half and asking many questions and receiving many different answers, we were told that the Camden Line only ran in the early morning and then again at 3:30. Oh, that would have been perfect…if our first interview wasn’t at 3:00 pm! Frustrated and tired we got Sarah’s car and got onto I-95 South, which was jammed packed with trucks. SOMEBODY, who will remain unnamed, thought it would be a good idea to take the Baltimore-Washington Beltway and get off at Exit 27 at College Park. This is where it all began. I had to call Dr.Dill and very regretfully tell her that we could not make the interview and that we were so very sorry. Let us list all of the roads that we took in order to arrive at UMD: I-95 North and South, 195, 295, 495, 695, Route 1, 3, and MD-32! Phew! It was crazy and we felt that we were either going to laugh or cry. After calling Dr.Jack Blanchard about 3 times he very graciously agreed to wait for us, as he was writing grants all day in his office and did not mind the break. Finally, at 5:30 pm we arrived at UMD; an hour and a half later than we were expected. Sarah parked the car and Steph, Kelly and I ran inside the Biology Psychology Building and frantically searched for Dr.Blanchard. He found us outside of his office like three little lost lambs and laughed at us, as I’m sure we were entertaining. The interview was very informative as we discussed his role as the Head of Clinical Programs in UMD’s psychology department. It was our first interview and we were ecstatic about making one out of three that day.

After the interview we headed back into Baltimore for dinner and then headed to Felton, PA…after hitting about an hour back up of traffic on 83 North. When we arrived at Sarah’s house we were absolutely beat! Being nomadic is difficult, especially directly after completing finals and school, but it was worth it to be able to obtain the valuable advice that Dr.Blanchard gave to all of us. We have some great footage from the interview and some the most valuable advice was to pursue your goals, no matter how intense they may seem and to have a plan of action about grad school. Research the programs that you would like, definately gain experience in your field, be committed and make contacts within your field. Your future begins now…make sure to think ahead!

So…today we set off for our amazing roadtrip to interview professionals and clear our confused minds about the future. Of course, we got off to a late start, in our usual style. After hugging our RA’s goodbye we packed Sarah’s forest green Cavalier to the brim and stuffed ourselves in last of all. We had to head to Annapolis, the capital of Maryland and as soon as we hit I-83 we were slowed down significantly. In order to pass the time we tried to get truck drivers to honk at us. We mostly just got laughed at, but it was entertaining all the same. The traffic took us back about an hour or two but we were able to see the sights in York, PA. By “the sights” we mean the local Walmart and a few houses that lined the detour road!

Before we knew it we arrived at our hotel. We booked the Super 8 Annapolis due to its fabulous location (near Annapolis) and its dirt cheap prices. Afterall, we are poor college students Driving into Annapolis was beautiful. It has a very rustic, colonial feel and is teeming with very dapper Naval officers…which wasn’t really a bad thing. But I digress…our first order of business was to take a group picture near the “Welcome to Annapolis” sign…which was an adventure in itself. Next we found parking near the Chesapeake Bay docks and took in all the local boutiques. That was a great time to explore and see the proud Naval academians walking around with their equally proud parents. We figured that we arrived near graduation time.

Nighttime in Annapolis is gorgeous! The quaintness of the city continues to grow on you as you pass all the outdoor cafes featuring local jazz quintets. Basically, it was a very classy evening in a beautiful, historic city. Then we returned to the Super 8, which felt ironic! It is a surprisingly good room and we have HBO, so we’re happy about that. Also, after many attempts we think we finally know how to work the camera properly. Even though it’s digital it is trickier than you’d think! Word of advice: if you use night vision indoors everybody looks like they’re blue and they’ve got radioactive beams shooting from their pupils. So, we’ve learned alot today and are pumped to interview the three lovely professionals that we have lined up tomorrow. After a bit of miscommunication, the gracious Anne Paxton has decided to meet with us at 8:00 AM…yes, AM tomorrow morning in Columbia, MD. She is a government event planning recruiter. In the afternoon we will be meeting with Dr.Bonnie Thornton Dill, a race and gender studies author, professor and the head of the Women’s Studies Dept. at University of Maryland. Also at UMD we will be meeting with Dr.Jack Blanchard, the head of Clinical Programs and researcher of schizophrenia at the same school. Now, sadly, it is our bedtime because we actually want to arrive in Columbia on time tomorrow morning. Until then…

So Steph and I(Kelly) are up at 2 am, packing, printing out directions, and just getting some last minute things put together. The reason we are up at 2 am, is because we are so excited for our road trip up and down the east coast these next couple of days. We are going to have so much fun driving to Annapolis, Baltimore, Philly, and Stroudsburg. We are going to interview some really interesting people in feilds that we are excited to learn more about. We bought some really healthy groceries, like gummy bears, and cheetos. We are going to bring everyone some really fun and exciting stories, so wish us luck.

Goodnight