and I’ve flown into Newark to stay with my friend Kelly in New Jersey for the night before we take the train into the city. All is well. My flight went smoothly, my bag made it alright, I even landed a seat close to two other UO students who would be joining me and 120 other rambunctious and hungry Advertising go-getters for the week. Next thing I know I’m in an Uber being brought to Kel’s house when Jara, my Uber driver, sparks conversation with me. She’s young, high energy, and born and raised in New Jersey. We laugh about my question of what there is to do in NJ and the fact that her response was something along the lines of: “nothing exciting.” I respond with the idea that that’s simply absurd. That every city has its own adventures; we just have to remind ourselves to re-invent our comfort zones, which innately comes with having a home town we feel we know top to bottom. She nods in agreement as I persuade her it can be fun to be a tourist in your own city. She asks about Oregon and what we’re known for (surprisingly, this question sort of threw me off. I’m pretty sure I panicked and my answer skewed from the Oregon Trail all the way to “Keep Portland Weird” or even something about Kombucha?).

Before I exit the car, I ask her what her favorite thing to is to do in New York City. She pauses and thinks for a couple of minutes before giving me an honest answer: “Honestly, just getting lost.” That’s it. This girl was awesome.

I feel as though every time I visit New York, heck, every time I travel in general but especially in New York, I’m reminded of the magic we receive when we simply allow ourselves to do as Jara suggests and ‘get lost.’ To brace the unknown with excitement for what we may discover. To knowingly go into situations with a headstrong uncertainty, which inevitably proctors a sense of open-mindedness. I did, in fact, take Jara’s advice and ‘get lost’ in the sense that I set a destination into my phone and ended up in a certain part of the city I had never been to before on days that it worked in my schedule. One day I ended up accidentally at the MoMa, another I ended up at an independent art gallery in Soho. Either way, I hope that everyone who came to New York this week had the chance to get lost. To find comfort in the uncomfortable. And to stumble upon something magical that they never would have expected to find. I hope too that we can all take a minute to remind ourselves that there is a true beauty in being lost or being a tourist in our own cities. Adventure is always, always out there. Sometimes we just need an Uber driver to remind us that it is.

-Emily Pearson

Senior, Project Manager/Strategist