Compilation of Advice

Before I left, I met with a variety of people to get advice on traveling for 9 months, studying healthcare, and information about specific countries/areas. There was a lot of great advice so I boiled it down into some common themes for this journey!

Be Flexible

This was advice given for both traveling and studying healthcare. Who knows who you are going to meet or what suggestions you will hear as you travel! Having flexibility allows you to take a side trip to visit somebody in a place you were not planning on going or stay in a place you love longer than expected.

One of my regrets on previous shorter trips (2-3 weeks) is that because of time constraints, I often have not had the flexibility to deviate too far from my original plan. I’ve had to pass up offers to go fishing with a local fisherman in Tobago or get a personal tour of a small town in Portugal from a friend I met the day before because I was already moving on to the next place. Each person I meet will hopefully lead to others so to truly take advantage of this trip flexibility is a must!

Forget Your Preconceived Notions

This was advice given for studying healthcare practice by both my professors and from people who have volunteered in Africa. Without having an open mind, you will not truly understand the problems that somebody is having or why they are completing a task a certain way. If you don’t understand the problem how can you come up with the right solution?

If I want to immerse myself in each country’s culture and healthcare, I have to be aware of how my own biases and past experiences may influence what I perceive. I have to be open to what I hear and ask questions to clarify my understanding so that I do not assume something that is not true. Not doing this is an easy way to misunderstand what I am studying.

The More You Know, The Better Questions You Can Ask

This is very true for conducting any research, conversation, or interview. How you frame questions is very important for the information you want to gather. Often, vague and generic knowledge leads to vague and generic questions. Generic questions can still be helpful because they provide room for a wider range of responses that you may not have encountered through specific ones. However, by doing research and developing fundamental knowledge on your own, you provide yourself with a solid foundation to formulate specific questions. Specific questions guide you to relevant answers for specialized or more focused solutions.  

For me, each person I meet with is an opportunity to learn from their experiences. How I tailor the interviews will really determine what information I get, especially if I only have a limited time with each person. I do not want to ask questions that I can readily get on the internet. I will need to conduct pre-research so I have a basic foundation of knowledge for each country that is relevant to the people I talk to.

Own What You Say and the Opportunities You Come Across

This is a personal piece of advice that I’ve noticed since I’ve started this journey. It’s easy to say that you want to do something but then let everything else already going in your life wash that thing away. It’s easy to say that you want to travel more or catch up with friend you haven’t seen in awhile. Often, it seems much harder to follow through with it.

In some ways this trip is a way for me to take back my life and hold myself accountable to what I say and want to do. Everything I do for the next 9 months is reliant on what I put effort into. I’ve taken the first step by starting the journey and preparing, the rest will be solely up to me.

 

Let me know what you think in the comments section below! If you have any advice that I missed, please feel free to share!