TOADTalk: Top Five Benefits of Traveling Alone

This summer, Dr. Greene took an unexpected vacation to Paris alone. She shared the joys of napping when she wanted, speaking only French, and discovering how much she enjoyed her own company.
Monday morning’s All-School Assembly launches with the Teacher On Active Duty (TOAD) sharing something of interest—a reflection, a story or song, a demonstration of some sort, or a simple poem. In this way, every week, the community gets to know one of our own a little better. Last week, Dr. Gina Greene was the TOAD. Dr. Greene teaches upper level history classes and is dorm supervisor for the Hills dorm. She and her husband, Jacob McKay, live with their two children near the Hill dorm. Dr. Greene joined the Thacher faculty in 2017. Her TOADTalk is featured below.

Good morning everyone! Bonjour! Bonjour!

My name is Dr. Greene and welcome to my TOADTalk. Every now and then a faculty member comes out here to do a TOADTalk and just knocks it out of the ballpark. Like Ms. Grant and the egg dance, which was the perfect way to start the year, and it is a hard act to follow. Sadly, for all of us, this will probably not be one of those times. 

However, I will follow in Ms. Grant’s footsteps in one crucial way: My talk today will be about a trip I took this summer! 

I had occasion to think about my summer the other day when I was talking with my students about rats and disease and urban space; this was in the context of studying the plague in medieval Europe. While we were talking, I had the sudden realization that, wow, a little over three short weeks ago, I was hanging out, enjoying life, and contemplating rats and urban space in Paris, of all places.

You see Paris, like many cities, has a rat problem right now, and if you walk down the street at night, past one of the many gorgeous parks that dot the city, you are likely to hear the rustle of disease-carrying rats in the bushes. I had the opportunity to witness this unpleasant phenomenon firsthand, as I spent one of the last weeks of August in Paris, something which seems incredible to me now, and frankly, seemed incredible to me at the time. 

While for some, going to Paris might not seem like that big of a deal, it’s all a matter of perspective. For me, it most definitely was a big deal. When I was working on my dissertation, I did my summer archival research in Paris. But, alas, my last research trip was years ago, and in the years since—due to cross-country moves, complicated family schedules, the demands of babies, and motherhood—I had not been to Paris, or really traveled abroad at all, in ten long years

I yearned to travel, but the idea of traveling had started to seem like a strange, impossible, and fantastical proposition. In fact, if someone had told me at the beginning of this summer, “You will go to Paris this year,” I would have surely laughed in their face.

And yet, I began to daydream about it, and some time in mid-July, and as corny as it sounds, I decided to make a vision board about it. I got a bunch of magazines, glue sticks, and some scissors, and cut up pictures of Paris. I pasted them onto a giant poster board. I’m not embarrassed to admit this, people, because it worked! Midway through this “vision-boarding” process, I suddenly thought, “Hey, I wonder what tickets to Paris go for these days?” I put down my glue stick and looked on-line, and then, lo and behold, on the very first website I glanced at, I saw the cheapest airfare to Europe that I have ever seen in my life. I suddenly realized that not only was it possible to go to Paris, but it was almost like the universe was daring me to do it. 

But there were other obstacles. I mean, “Me,” or should I say, “Moi?” go to Paris? It really seemed almost too awesome to be possible. I fretted about it for a day or so, consulted my best friends and my husband, and then, to make a long story short, I decided to click on the ticket before the miraculously cheap fare disappeared. 

And so the die was cast, I was about to head off to Paris all by myself.

Now, this is the part where I tell you about all of the things that went wrong, or how bored I was, but the reality is I had an amazing time. For one week, and one week only, I did all of the French things—not the touristy things, mind you—but the “Bonjour monsieur, bonjour mademoiselle, I am pretending that I am Parisian” things.

For one week, I wandered through the medieval parts of Paris. I strolled along the Seine, I sat in the cafes, I ate zee cheese, I admired zee art and zee clothing, I spoke zee French. I have zero complaints or regrets about this trip, as it was in fact, perfect

Now, it occurred to me that a huge part of the success of this trip had less to do with my mediocre French and more to do with my willingness, when I realized a family trip to Paris with my husband and kids would not be feasible, to just try traveling alone. This involved basically spending an entire week, more or less, alone. 

Being comfortable spending time alone is not a skill I was born with. I mean, I remember a time when I had to summon the courage to go to a movie alone. But as I got older, I began to see solo adventures of various types as amazing opportunities.

Anyway, I share this story with you all because, whether you are a teenager contemplating an SYA year abroad or an adult, it may not have occurred to you that you too could travel alone—and not just for school or business—but for adventure and pleasure, because you want to travel, because you are able to travel, and because traveling alone will be a new and challenging experience.

So, without further ado, here are my top five benefits of traveling alone:

  1. When you travel alone, you set the pace! Fun fact, travelling can be exhausting. There is kind of this intense psychological pressure to see it all and do it all, and this can be exacerbated when you travel with a group. But when you travel alone, you can give yourself permission to see and do as little or as much as you’d like. If, midway through your day, you decide that the best thing you could do is go to the hotel and take an afternoon nap, there is nobody to disagree or otherwise make a stink about it! 
  1. Travelling alone allows you to set your own itinerary! The first question my dad asked me when I told him I was going on this trip was, “Are you going to see X, Y, and Z?” My response? “Nope, nopity, nope!” Traveling alone, I was able to plan an agenda that was all my own, only going to the museums and neighborhoods and events that I was curious about.
  1. If you travel alone, you can eat all of your meals at the finest establishments—i,e., the one you want to eat at. Ice cream for dinner? Pas de probleme. Fromage for breakfast? Mais bien sur! All meal choices are the best choices when you choose them. End of story.
  1. Traveling solo allows you to have authentic interactions with locals. When you travel in a group, you can always fall back on social interactions with that group in your own native language. You don’t have to risk interacting with local people. But when you travel alone, you have to speak with the locals, and it greatly enriches your experience. I spoke with everyone I could, and even if hearing my labored French and seeing the look of confusion in their eyes they kindly switched to English to help me understand, I always continued to speak only in French, and I loved it.
  1. One of the greatest things about traveling alone is that it allows you to find out the answer to an important question: “What would I even do with myself for a week?” In addition to all of the things I’ve already mentioned, traveling alone allows you to find out the answer to this question. If you are like me, which I suspect you are, you will daydream, you will read, you will have exciting adventures, you will sleep well, you will eat new things, you will discover new neighborhoods, you will talk to strangers, you will take risks, you will learn about history and culture, you will go to concerts, you will stroll through parks, and so much more. In fact, there’s so much you can do when you travel alone that you’ll wonder how you ever managed to travel with someone else in the past. 
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