“The Open Road,” created by four recent college graduates, is a documentary that asks the number one question on the minds of most college students: “What am I going to do when I graduate?”
The film gives a wise piece of advice for this common conundrum: how to explore the possibilities out there and turn something you love into a career.
The creators of “The Open Road” are also the founders of the individuality-promoting project Roadtrip Nation. In the film, the foursome — Michael Marriner, Nathan Gebhard, Amanda Gall and Brian McAllister — decide to forgo their original, traditional plans of becoming doctors, teachers and working for family businesses. They beautify an old 1985 RV with a coat of bright green paint and travel 15,000 miles around the nation in search of insight to their futures. This search takes them to college campuses where they talk to students about their future plans, eventually taking them along to interviews with successful people.
On their journey, the road-trippers talk to such professionals as the co-founder of Nantucket Nectars juice, a lobsterman in Maine, Dell CEO Michael Dell and Starbucks chairman and founder Howard Schultz. These honest question-and-answer sessions gave the interviewees a chance to talk about how their career plans changed while in college and what strategies got them to where they are today. The professionals offered an array of advice to college-age people, such as turning a hobby into a career, following your dream even if others criticize you and accepting low pay in the beginning to gain experience. Each interviewee left their mark on the young travelers by signing the ceiling inside their RV.
“The Open Road” functions as a travelogue and a tool for career inspiration. The film showcases beautiful places, such as Seattle and New York City, and includes segments with the four travelers engaging in enjoyable activities, such as jumping off a dock into water in Maine. By including fun and games, the focus is taken away from the serious topic of the post-college job search, reminding viewers that life isn’t all work and no play. The documentary also shows the problems they encounter, such as mechanical problems with their RV and an anthrax scare in Washington, D.C.
This film offers great insight to anyone who is struggling with their future career plans. By giving the lobsterman just as much respect and attention as Schultz, the road-trippers prove that quirky careers can be just as appreciable and rewarding as big-business careers. The variety of people interviewed shows that no interest is too dumb to become a life-long occupation. For example, the vice president of programming for the Cartoon Network said in the film that he chose his career because he loved cartoons and wanted to go to work wearing jeans.
The only thing missing was a conclusion from the four stars of the film. Gebhard, Marriner, McAllister and Gall never go into how their own career plans evolved during or after the trip, which seemed like a glaring oversight after such a journey.
Roadtrip Nation has released a book by the same name which details the group’s fall 2001 road trip and offers advice on finding one’s path in life. The Roadtrip Nation founders also run a program, “Behind the Wheel,” where they select several college students every year to embark on their own path-finding road trip. A second documentary, “Destination Unknown,” was released recently and followed the first “Behind the Wheel” road trip from last summer. Both documentaries are available on DVD. For more information about Roadtrip Nation, visit their Web site at http://www.roadtripnation.com.