Travel Blog

One of the great things about speaking to high school students is that it dispels any doubts you might have about the younger generation. At least that has been my experience with my visits to my friend Joe Walpole's classes at Miami Lakes Educational Center.

True, the students he has me talk to are in The Cambridge Program, so they're above average. Yesterday I told them how I started in journalism at the Trenton Times by making a joke of a job application. ("What was your last job?" "Working on a farm." "May we contact your last employer?" "Sure, if you speak Alsatian.") A few of them were studying journalism, and I thought that this was a good lesson in the importance of being different. Newspapers as we know them may disappear, but not an appreciation of originality.

I also told them the love story that resulted in my first book. They listened with bright, eager, engaged expressions. They laughed at my jokes. They asked intelligent questions. "When you come back from a trip with lots of material, how do you decide what you're going to write about?" "What's your writing process?" "How do you handle rejection?"

Nobody asked the usual: "How many countries have you been to?" Or, "What's your favorite country?" South Florida students have a worldliness that will serve them well as they go through life. I asked how many spoke a language other than English and most of the hands in the class went up. They were already way ahead of me when I was their age. I had been invited to inspire them, and they ended up inspiring me.