On the Road

College students are often familiar with how to find and
maneuver the well-traveled road to success. Honors and AP courses,
plus extracurricular activities and high SAT scores, equal entrance
into an accredited university, which then often equals a
well-paying job and happiness.

By the end of senior year, however, it may become all too
obvious that the equation of life is nowhere near that simple.
Many, such as Mike Marriner and Nathan Gebhard, may even realize
they don’t have a clue about the vast range of opportunities
available out in the “real” world.

Authors of “Roadtrip Nation: A Guide to Discovering Your
Path in Life,” Marriner and Gebhard both realized during
their junior year at Pepperdine University that they were not happy
with the direction their lives were taking. Gebhard was on his way
to becoming a consultant, while Marriner was getting ready for
medical school. Thus, the idea was born to embark on a road trip
and interview various people about their paths in life.

“It hit us that we had no sense of what was out there
besides these paths that had been laid out for us because
we’d been so institutionalized,” Marriner said.
“So that’s when we thought, before we make this
humongous decision for our life, let’s first see the
world.”

Four years, two road trips, a book and a documentary later,
Marriner and Gebhard now have full-time jobs educating college
students about the less-traveled road to success. Their philosophy
lies in their simple mantra: “Find the open road.”

“It’s really a new way of thinking for our
generation,” Marriner said. “We’re trying to
thwack our generation on the head and go: “˜Look, before you
get on those railroad tracks, stick your head up and see the
world,’ because this is what everyone we interviewed
did.”

Their just-released book, “Roadtrip Nation,” follows
their second trip around the country with friends Brian McAllister
and UCLA alumna Amanda Gall. The initial goal of this adventure was
to film a documentary of their interviews. But after they were
featured in Forbes, Random House offered them a book deal.

“When we hit the road, we had nothing going for us,”
Marriner said. “We were nobodies. We were cold-calling
people, we had no sponsors, and we had no publishers, but we really
believed in it and when we came back the universe truly conspired
around us.”

Despite being “nobodies,” the group managed to
arrange interviews with the likes of Gary Erickson, the creator of
Clif Bar, Beth McCarthy Miller, director of “Saturday Night
Live,” and Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks.
Contained in the book are over 150 interviews the team conducted
with people like these, whose paths in life were riddled with bumps
and turns.

“I feel like my eyes have been opened up to all the
possibilities that are out there,” Gall said. “There
are so many subcultures in the United States that, without getting
out there and seeing it firsthand, you don’t even know
it’s there.”

“It was a relief to hear that other people who are now
successful and very happy were at a point in their lives where I
am, or was when I was on this road trip,” she continued.

Helping others realize that they aren’t alone in feeling
unsure about what their futures may hold is one of the goals of the
“Roadtrip Nation” movement. The other objective is to
encourage people to get out there and explore the endless
possibilities.

“I think when you’re young, you have this beautiful
sliver of time between college and family/mortgage-hood, where the
repercussions of screwing up and going into debt are not that
big,” Marriner said. “Graduate and charge ““ do
something a little bit crazy.”

For more information about the “Roadtrip Nation”
movement, and to view the documentary, visit
www.roadtripnation.com.

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