Adult Field Trips

Everybody remembers Field Trip day when you were in elementary school. It was the day you loaded up on buses with everyone in your class and got to travel to the Museum, or Zoo, or Aquarium (or in Colorado, hiking out in the wilderness). The point of these trips was not necessary to maximize learning, although that was certainly part of it. The point of these trips was to expose you to a new environment and experience something you were learning about in class. Nothing makes learning sink in more than physical, tangible, experience and that is exactly what your teachers hoped you got out of your trips away from school.

Whether or not you learned anything from those excursions is sort of beside the point. The point is there exists an idea of leaving your normal environment to get a firsthand taste of something in hopes of gaining a new perspective and understanding of the world. I would like to propose that you shouldn’t stop going on field trips once you leave school and should actually seek them out as you continue on the path to old age.

Your Environment

We all live in a native environment of sorts. This can be physical, psychological, and whatever other dimensions you choose to occupy (metaverse included here but beyond the scope of this post). The point is we all live somewhere and the longer we are there, doing our little tasks and following our little routines, the harder we are to impress and the harder it is to shake us out of that mindset. This is great for efficiency but the result is a consistent thought and behavior pattern that limits the range of your experiences. This planet, especially in 2022, has a lot to offer. There are so many activities, cultures, foods, and sights that exist even within the United States that many people never bother to see for themselves and instead appreciate only from behind their phone screen. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

These trips outside of your environment serve both to make you an excellent dinner guest with lots of fun stories and also give you a breadth of perspectives that make you smarter and better-informed about the world as it actually exists. Yes, routines and home bases are good but if you stay too long you become ignorant and begin to project your impression of places and cultures you’ve never visited and narrow your mind to what all is out there. In short, having a home environment is a good thing but it is limiting and escaping it from time to time is a net positive endeavor.

What is an Adult Field Trip™️ (Trademark Pending)

A Field Trip as defined by me is any time you go experience something that is completely outside of your natural environment. As a kid that was leaving the classroom to look at the penguins at the zoo. As an adult, a great example would be attending a Lucha Libre match while on a trip to Mexico (well worth your time IMHO). The goal is to remove yourself so far from your day-to-day that you are forced to do something you would never do and see things you’ve never seen. This can take many shapes and forms. A field trip can be as close to your home as a trip down the street or as far away as across the world. The important thing is that it is outside of your comfort zone by a large margin.

The good news is finding a Field Trip is incredibly easy in 2022. They reveal themselves all of the time in the form of the thought “Dear God why would someone do that/ go to that/ put themselves through that?” When you have that reaction you have run into a situation that you fundamentally don’t understand and therefore an opportunity to experience something completely new. Each of us with a decent wifi connection is exposed to hundreds of these a year and thus finding one that may appeal to you should require minimal additional effort.

How to Experience a Field Trip

There are a few different ways you could go about enjoying an Adult Field Trip and this is key to ensuring you maximize these new situations you throw yourself into.

The first and in my opinion best mindset to take when going into one of these is the attitude of a novice. It is easy to write off something that is outside your realm of interest as something to “stop by but not engage with” but taking that attitude would cheat you out of a valuable experience. The attitude you want to enter with is one of the novice. You want to show up as if you are just starting down a long path of going to these events, doing these activities, or hanging out with these people.

For example, during my first year in New York, there was a Monster Truck rally happening in New Jersey a short train ride away from my apartment. Now, this is not something I ever dreamed I would want to attend, but one of our friends suggested that we go, and the rest of us didn’t have plans so go we did. While there we fully integrated ourselves into the experience and began rooting like passionate fans. This included hooting and hollering at out our favorite maneuvers (backflip, duh) and cheering on our favorite drivers (Gravedigger). With that attitude not only did I enjoy the heck out of the day but I also learned quite a bit about what I was watching. If you didn’t know me you would a) think I was a die-hard fan and b) assume that I would be going to a lot of these in the future. While neither of those is true it is because I wanted to give it “The old college try” I had what is one of my most memorable afternoons in New York. Plus I get to say that I’ve been to a Monster Truck rally which puts me in a small minority of people I know.

Outside of acting like you are about to dive deep into whatever activity you are participating in, the next best attitude to approach a field trip with is that of the human observer. The best part about going to the zoo is seeing an animal in a simulated real-life habitat and observing what these creatures spend their time doing. Whether that is lounging, playing, throwing poop, or whatever, you are viewing how another live animal acts in the world. Humans are no different. While we are technically the same species, humans behave and enjoy wildly different activities from each other and if you are somewhere with people with whom you feel you have nothing in common, you can gain immensely valuable knowledge about the human race by simply observing.

My latest example of this was at a concert in Hollywood. I go to quite a few concerts so this wasn’t exactly outside of my comfort zone but the venue I was at was definitely not somewhere I would willingly frequent. It was a Vegas-style club with tables everywhere, scantily dressed bartenders and bottle service girls flitting about the venue, and a crowd of people who I have to assume had no idea there was a concert going on. These people seemed exclusively concerned with getting laid and signaling to other people how cool they are. This could have easily got me down as it wasn’t the experience I was hoping to have, but instead, I put on my observer hat and watched the mass of humanity ebb, flow, and sometimes crash around me. The focus of my night out slightly shifted and I learned a lot about what goes on at a club night in Hollywood and laughed at a great deal of the behavior I saw. Sparing details, all I can say is that the result of my night was a lot of giggles and an eye-opening perspective of what could happen during a night out. As a side note, I was happy I don’t frequent that venue, but I was glad I went to see it for myself.

The field trip mindset stipulates that you may not be doing that thing ever again, and if you don’t, you are going to want to get the most out of the experience. That way, once you’ve returned from your excursion, not only do you have a few great stories and accrued knowledge, but you are also able to say “Yes it was great but I don’t think I need to do that again.” Like me going back to that club on Vine St. in Hollywood.

The beauty of this mindset is that it transcends just going to things that you haven’t experienced before but it can also extend to things that you are pretty sure you are going to hate. Now, I will always suggest involvement as the best way to experience anything. But if you can’t get involved, or don’t want to, then observation is a great way to maximize learning and enjoyment and make something that would be otherwise loathsome, entertaining, and educational.

A Field Trip I hope to take soon

I’ve mentioned a couple of my favorite field trips but there is one that I haven’t yet prioritized that is incredibly high on my list. That is a trip to Highland Stadium to experience a tailgate and football game with the Bills Mafia. If you aren’t familiar with the Bills Mafia then please take a gander at this gif of some of their finest work.

These people are intense about Buffalo Bills football. So intense to the point where they will light tables on fire and try to break them with the people’s elbow from the roof of an RV. That is a level of dedication that quite frankly I just don’t understand. That being said, I would love to go to a Bills Tailgate just once to see this live and talk to some of the people there about what those tables did to deserve that treatment. I suspect that it's a community event. Not unlike church for these people. The parking lot of the Highmark Stadium serves as a meeting place for Buffalo residents to gather and make merry. The RV High Dive Table Smash serves as social proof of your dedication to the cause. And because I can’t leave this out, drunk men will tend to do what we could label as “stupid things.” If I’m able to go experience this first hand I’ll be able to regale you all about my trip and list some do’s and don’ts for a Bills game.

If anyone wants to host me at a Bill game please let me know, I would love to go

Field Trips serve a purpose and if you go experience something first hand, the next time you see a video of it happening, while you may not agree with the actions taken, you will understand what is going on. Plus you’ll be able to say “I was there once and saw _____” which if nothing else will make you a more interesting dinner guest.