Tripped Out

A PBS series skirts the road less traveled.

By Philissa Cramer
Thursday September 21, 2006

In the first few minutes of "The Open Road," the 2004 documentary produced by Roadtrip Nation, a multimedia empire offering career advice for unmoored twenty-somethings, a roadtripper asks a Harvard coed what she’s studying. "Post-colonial African-American migration narratives," she replies. "Holy moly! That is sweet!" comes the rejoinder from behind the camera. The implication is clear: such a field is impressive –and also foreign—to the “Roadtrip Nation” interviewer, who had hit the road precisely because his own path was much fuzzier.

Roadtrip Nation launched just two weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, when four friends beginning the rest of their lives embarked on a post-college trip "to see what else was out there" besides being a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or teacher. During their three-month trip, the quartet logged over 15,000 miles in an RV, meeting with business executives, entertainers, and other success stories, all the while documenting the experience on shaky digital video. "The Open Road" was broadcast on PBS in 2004, and in the five years since the first trip, Roadtrip Nation has launched a film company, two self-help books, a television miniseries, and, they hope, a movement aimed at helping young people “define [their] own road in life.”

One thing they haven’t done is get a haircut. At the Aug. 31 New York City kickoff event for the "Roadtrip Nation" series airing this fall on PBS, original roadtrippers Mike Marriner and Brian McAllister addressed the small crowd from below shaggy bangs, looking the part of bewildered young adults, in plaid shorts, polo shirts, and flip-flops. And yet they are firmly ensconced in a productive, grown-up career, one that includes corporate partnerships with State Farm Insurance, Nike, and even the Princeton Review, which is promoting Roadtrip Nation to high school students at its test preparation sites this fall. Indeed, it’s fitting that the group held its PBS series Aug. 31 kickoff event at the Apple Store in Soho: the neighborhood, once edgy and full of artists, now feels like an outdoor shopping mall, and Apple has scrubbed its "Think Different" advertising campaign. Just like the Apple store, “Roadtrip Nation” shares some qualities with the “conformist” culture it purports to reject.

So it’s hard to shed the sense that at least a little of “Roadtrip Nation’s” cluelessness is an act for the camera. In fact, some reading between the lines reveals that Marriner and McAllister air a somewhat over-simplified version of the truth. In reality, their post-graduate road trip grew in part from their collaboration with a business professor at Pepperdine University during their senior year of college on a seminar called Roadtrip Scholars, built around the notion of seeking career inspiration from local luminaries. Students no longer take road trips for credit, but they still book appointments, plan routes, and research personalities—a far cry from the freewheeling lifestyle conjured by the idea of hitting the road. Herein lies the paradox of Roadtrip Nation: it presents the “spirit of exploration” as a fantastic way to avoid answering the question, mocked in the first line of Roadtrip Nation’s manifesto, “What do you want to do with your life?”—and yet it turns exploration itself into work.

Viewed in this way, the project actually gains focus. The Roadtrip Nation book, which was first published in 2003 and has now been updated and reprinted by Random House, contains a wealth of guidance about how to land audiences with interesting people, and how to make these meetings useful. One section tries to take the fear factor out of cold-calling people you don’t know; another offers advice about how to prepare for the interview itself. There’s even a note reminding you to send a thank you note. Any career counselor worth her salt would give the same advice, but when it comes from young people who have actually leveraged their connections to make a living, committing to a regimen of “informational interviews” seems less ridiculous.

And while the interviews can get tedious they, too, are filled with good advice about the merits of taking chances and seeking personal satisfaction in the professional world. "It’s not like college isn’t going to be there in six months, or a year. You can always go back," Michael Dell of the Dell Computer Corporationsays. "What’s the worst thing that could happen?  You’re one year older, two years older, and you have had all these experiences in between," says poet Devorah Major. “You’re not going to be the best you can be unless you’re confident and balanced within yourself,” advises Richard Woolcott, CEO of Volcom Clothing.

This advice makes the series worth watching, as does the fact that the content promises to address issues that the first documentary missed. The 12 episodes of the series focus on the trips of several sets of unfocused young adults who were selected by Roadtrip Nation to receive funds to “find their own roads in life.” Significantly, a member of the 2005 group nails the real problem for many young people: that there are “just so many options,” not too few. Another group begins to tackle the issue of first-generation college students, who often feel the pressure to enter a "real" field most acutely and have the least financial flexibility to take risks.

The series also marks a welcome evolution from the tone of Roadtrip Nation’s original manifesto, which proclaims with late-90s selfishness, "As a generation, we need to get back to focusing on individuality." As the project has grown, its participants have begun to see just how powerful it can be, Marriner says, pointing to a second manifesto, published in the group’s second book, that calls on participants to create “a collective chain of individual discovery harnessed to mobilize potential in ourselves and in our world.” (To that end, the group plans to convert its fleet of RVs to vehicles running on alternative energy sources by the summer of 2007.) Ultimately, Roadtrip Nation is focused on encouraging individual exploration, but “if you can inspire people on an individual level to do what they’re passionate about, you can change the world,” Marriner adds.

It’s only been a little over two years since the first of the second-generation road trips, but already one business major has switched her concentration to environmental studies; a music-loving student bound for medical school has released an album and now promotes up-and-coming bands; and Simon Maude, one of the series’ stars, has committed himself to humanitarian work.

Roadtrip Nation doesn’t offer up rocket science, or even post-colonial African-American migration narratives. But it does present the informational interview not as piece of senior-year drudgery but as a cool, countercultural attack on conformity that even the most hardened slackers can get excited about. And if that’s what it takes for young people to work hard and with passion, more power to Roadtrip Nation—even if its founders could use a haircut.

 
Philissa Cramer is a writer living in New York.

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Comments

1. Cool thing these people are doing! Who cares how long their hair is, it doesn’t matter.

   — Hummingbird - Sep 26, 07:24 PM - #