Thoughts on exploration and the open road

America. Breathe it in. The taste of the open prairies, the lure of wild, uncharted expanses, the explorer's thrill as ancient as Columbus himself. Nowdays of course, the classic Kerouac-style adventure is intensified by the many more tangible charms of the great Union. The ritzy glamour of the great metropolises, the utopian golden coasts of Miami or Santa Cruz, the grandeur and scale of the natural wonders, the music, art, psychosis and idolatry that has created the most influential culture of all time.

I could go on singing praises (and may I just state a private thank you to Obama for making it once again acceptable to speak well of America), but before I give in to the temptation to apply for a job with Lonely Planet, let me get myself at least on the right track before I start, even if I branch off a thousand times as soon as I get going.

Well, here I am on the brink of three glorious months - equipped with a little laptop, a sleeping bag and most essentially a pair of cheap aviators - a handful of dollars in my pocket and the proverbial open road before me. My mission: to seek out new universities and to boldly go where Unis in the USA has never gone before. The itinerary, currently in its seventeenth incarnation and counting, covers North, South, East and West. Florida, New England, Oregon, Texas and, yes, Nebraska are all present and correct. The Statue of Liberty is diligently waiting for me.

I have of course been to America before. My mother, born and raised in San Francisco's Bay Area, gave me not only my life but a US passport (this makes airports a hell of a lot easier, let me tell you). Up until now I have visited a whopping four states, and some bits of the country - Berkeley and Washington DC - I know very well indeed. But between them lies an unimaginable distance for a little islander like me. I have been to Chicago, New York and Boston, but only their airports. I have heard songs about Texas and North Dakota, but I live in a country that could fit many times over into either of these states. Detroit could be a myth for all I know.

And then there are the universities. Here I do have some genuine experience, but again I will be operating under a certain level of irony, because although I will spend the summer examining and assessing "schools" (as they are called by Americans), an activity which I try to stop myself seeing as a payback for A-Levels, I will do so in the knowledge that in October I will start at a university back in Blighty. What can I say? It's a good university and it's cheap(er) and it's easy. But there is a strong part of me that resents this decision - that wants to participate in what is clearly a far superior education, where you can develop more than one interest which you pick blindly at age seventeen, which is what happens in the UK.

In the summer of 2007 I took a short, introductory course in Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. American colleges seem, from what I have seen so far, to be much closer to the ideal of university life than anywhere else in the world. Maybe this is because the ideal is an American one, but nevertheless to me there is wholly lacking any sense of we-work-because-we-have-to or we-work-only-when-we-have-to, which are the two ever-present extremes in the UK. In America, students seem either genuinely interested in what they do, or at least genuinely happy with why they're doing it. They don't revere their education as a be all and end all, and they don't take it for granted, except at Princeton. I am looking forward to having these opinions and horrible generalisations disabused and reaffirmed in the coming weeks.

I have much to explore, and much to look forward to, and I hope to bring as much as I can of what I learn to this project and this blog. But for now let me read some more Kerouac and get out the old Johnny Cash records. Stay posted!