Dream Job

“I never wanted to be anyone else”. –Peter Fonda

  It seems like about once a year Outside magazine publishes a story about  dream jobs, and although I’ve admired many of them I’ve never seen one  that I would trade for my own. Everyone’s idea of the perfect job is a little  different, but the bottom line is that most people would rather spend their days doing something that they are passionate about than slaving away  for the weekends and a couple of weeks of vacation a year. As the creative  force behind School of the World, my job is to continually evolve the school  and its environment, making it the best learning vacation experience  possible. Everything from architectural design and course planning has gone  into it, but for the most part I just try to translate my love of travel, learning,  art, and design into an experience others can share. In other words, my job  is to do what I love, then inspire others to do the same.

  A lot of students have been impressed by the great vibe of our staff. We have a very low turnover rate (sorry for all of you who have sent us inquiries about jobs). Everyone here really enjoys what they do. When I first started the school I was really focusing on how to make my dream job a reality, but what I didn’t foresee was how that would create a ripple effect that would echo through the school and influence guests in their approach to their own lives after returning home. I’m no inspirational speaker, but I’ve been asked so many times about how I managed to set my life up this way that I thought maybe I’d post some tips for the dreamers out there. After all, I remember the moment when I saw someone else living their dream and I thought, “Hey, if they can do it I can too.” Sounds cheesy, but the initial decision wasn’t anything more than that. I didn’t have a clue about how to make it reality at the time… the School of the World started out as an idea written on a bar napkin!

Tips for Dreamers and Dream Job seekers:

“That’s why they call it work, it’s not supposed to be fun.” Steer clear of negative people that say stuff like this. There are plenty of wet blankets out there that will tell you your idea won’t work. There are a lot more people out there doing what they love and getting paid for it than you realize.

Sacrifice and be stubborn. Kris Kristofferson was a Rhodes scholar, Oxford graduate, and helicopter pilot that turned down an offer to teach at West Point in order to chase a dream of being a songwriter. He took a job as a janitor at the recording studio to be near the music. He went from janitor to songwriter to Hollywood icon because he wasn’t concerned with what anyone else thought.

The time you have between when you are born and when you die is infinitely more valuable than any sum of money you can acquire. Despite every device we buy that promises to save time, time cannot be saved. It goes by faster and faster every year of your life. Spend it wisely with people that matter to you and doing what makes you happy.

Get a handle on the difference between wants and needs. The reward of having a dream job isn’t usually financial; it’s more about quality of life. It certainly can have financial rewards, but that never seems to be the main drive of any of the passionate people I’ve met.

  Try to eat healthier and enjoy activities that double as exercise. Living your dream is about nurturing a healthy soul, but before you can get there you have to take care of your body and mind. Eating healthy and exercising increase your energy level and contribute to your overall happiness and outlook on life. You mind is like a muscle in the sense that it can atrophy if you aren’t giving it enough exercise. Learning doesn’t end on graduation day.

And finally, don’t wait. Potential, even great potential, has a shelf life. Even if there are obstacles, make a plan and start taking small steps towards your goal one day at a time. For some reason the process of making a plan in list form and then marking off steps as I complete them works as great encouragement to me. Find what works for you. 

Good luck and safe travels.

Green Initiative

Today we put into action a plan to reduce our environmental impact here at the School of the World. Our plan includes implementing a more thorough recycling program, switching from the community chemically treated water system to an in-house natural purified and ionized water system, reducing waste, and reducing energy usage. 

  Synonymous with life itself, water is the most precious resource we have, and this is where we are going to start to make our changes. In a country that receives over 116 inches of annual rainfall, I have to admit I took water for granted here until recently. It took the water bill jumping from $20 a month to $300, and also the eco-guilt of seeing mountains of plastic water bottles building up in our recycling bins and trashcans to nudge us into action. Averaging 20+ guests per week, all of which buy bottled water, you can imagine how many plastic bottles we are hauling to the curb each week. The city water is potable, but as with most municipal water systems it is heavily treated with chemicals, creating “dead” water. Our plan will include digging a well to tap into naturally filtered water and also installing an ionizing filtration system to provide the highest quality water possible for us and our guests.

  The next step will be to start using composters to help turn food waste into garden mulch. Food leftovers makes up as much as 40% of the waste in landfills, where it gives off harmful gases. During a recent visit to the States I learned more about how easy composting is now, thanks to new kitchen compost appliances. Check out this video to find out more about new compost solutions for your kitchen. www.naturemill.com/video_histChan.html

  The third step will be to address the conservation of energy. We plan to use heat reflecting paint and sun shading screens (like the ones used in landscape nurseries) to reduce the heat on the roof of the hotel. This will allow the air conditioners to run more efficiently and less frequently, reducing kilowatt hours. In addition to these big steps we have a lot of small improvements that we hope to implement over the next few months. 

Learning Vacations

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” –St. Augustine

  One of the great things about life is that it can’t be explained in an article, learned from a book, sold in a store, or advertised on television. It has to be experienced first hand. Advertising is usually geared towards convincing you that buying products will improve your life, but life and its definition are still as unique and personal as each living individual. In my life I have come to realize that learning is essential to growth and change, and that travel is a critical part of my life education.

  “Learning Vacations” and “Learning Holidays” have become catch phrases in the last few years to describe a travel education genre that is not just geared towards university aged “study abroad” or “gap year” students. These experiences are for anyone of any age that wants to combine travel with learning a new skill, and take home more than just a sunburn and hangover. There are programs out there for learning just about every sport, hobby, language, and profession you can think of. Being an avid traveler with an insatiable thirst for new experiences, I have attended advanced photography, apnea diving, and sailing schools all within the last four months. My excuse is research for a book I’m planning to write on “learning vacations”, but mostly I’m busy ticking things off on my life/ dream list. One thing I have found in my research is that our school, School of the World, is still very unique in what it offers despite the recent growth of this travel genre.

  Studying and vacation are antonyms for many people, but the funny thing is that when you are enjoying a great hands-on experience you are learning by doing and having fun. Removed from their busy and often stressful home surroundings fellow students are happy to be there and the environment is more conducive to quick and enjoyable learning. Learning doesn’t hinder a relaxed vacation but rather adds another dimension to it. It is the moment, the people you share it with, and what you learned that stick with you.

It’s life education on vacation.

Digital Photography for Travelers- Digital vs. Film

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”  ~Ansel Adams

  The digital revolution in photography has both fans and critics. The ease with which a digital photograph can be manipulated and altered has rocked some people’s confidence in the authenticity of the captured moment. The digital age is a storyteller that can’t always be trusted; a dramatic embellisher whose high contrast overly saturated tales sometimes seem too good to be true… but it is also a worldly traveler, teacher, and historian that reaches a wider audience than any of it’s media ancestors ever dreamed of. 

   I came by my acceptance of digital photography and my caution for published words simultaneously. I was already living in Costa Rica when I was introduced to the pixel pushing instant gratification version of a camera that was touted as the latest in technology. The tropical humidity and eco-guilt of disposing of darkroom chemicals had slowed my inner photographer down long enough to make me open-minded to the idea of the micro mosaics as the future of photography. I don’t think they had even arrived at the term “mega-pixel” yet, as there clearly wasn’t anything “mega” about these pixels other than their size, nearly visible to the naked eye. I made a pinhole camera in college that took better pictures, but speed and convenience were the selling points here. In 1999 I received a phone call from Rolling Stone magazine, which wanted me to take pictures for an article (they had chosen Jaco as one of their Spring Break 1999 destinations) and they needed the photos the same day. (It should be noted here that my main qualification at the time was that I was the only person in Jaco that owned a digital camera!) Back then Jaco was a tiny town, and finding six gringos that could pass for Spring breakers was actually a challenge. It took most of the day and the promise of free booze to round them up. I sent the photos off by email the same day, a task that seemed much more impressive ten years ago, and got one crappy little photo (probably one of the worst photos I’ve ever taken) published. When I finally got a copy of the magazine and saw the photo sandwiched between a beautiful stock photograph of a surfer on a wave (not even in Costa Rica) and an article that was (obviously to me) written by someone that had never been to Jaco, I realized that my digital photo, despite being slightly staged and inebriated, was the only genuine moment that ever happened in that story. Photos, even digital ones, take a lot more work to manipulate than words.

 All of the revolutionary technology that helps us enhance and intensify the moment in time that a

photograph freezes can only do that... highlight the captured moment. It is up to you the photographer to seek those magic moments out. There is an endless bounty of them all around you. “Having the eye”, artistically speaking, is the ability to spot them, and the components of a photograph (f-stops, shutter speeds, white balance, etc.) are nothing more than the language you use to describe that moment. Since the stories my photographs tell are about people, places, or moments that I experienced, I choose to use the language of the camera with only minor post production accents (that aren’t really any different than what is done in a darkroom). I prefer to spend my time out looking for the next glimpse of the “soul of the world” rather than hunched over a computer pushing an image to the place where photography ends and digital art begins.   

  My advice to novice photographers is to get out there and take a lot of photos. Seriously, keep that trigger finger moving. Experiment. Change settings. Move around. Look for new angles to see the world. The only way to figure your camera out is to try every option and adjustment it has. Photography is a numbers game; ask any photographer and they will tell you, for every one great shot they have they discarded hundreds if not thousands of others. Digital’s greatest advantage over film is the ability to experiment and take unlimited numbers of photos without the worries of processing or developing costs. It is also an instant teacher, as every setting is recorded and each photo is immediately available for review. The other benefit of taking so many photos is that adjusting the camera settings becomes second nature. When you do see that shot you’ve been looking for you’ll express it fluently, and get photographs that are beautiful enough to not warrant cosmetic photo surgery. 

The first question I am usually asked when people see this photograph is if I manipulated it in Photoshop. The answer is no. While hiking in Patagonia I saw two clouds cross paths, and for less than two seconds they formed a perfect heart. Keep your camera with you, and the lens cap off, and magic moments will present themselves.