5 Benefits of Traveling to Boost Your Academic Success and Career Prospects

Why do you travel?

Is it a curiosity guiding you to explore an unknown place? Or, is it a challenge to visit as many countries as possible?

Whatever your motivation, you realize how lucky you are to live in a world that’s open and affordable for everyone, don’t you? For a long time, only the privileged could experience traveling with all the benefits it brought, while others learned about far-away lands from memoirs or textbooks. Today, five in ten people list traveling as a hobby on their social media and other profiles.

And the best part:

While some consider traveling nothing but visiting a new place, it’s about much more than that. It affects mindsets, expands knowledge, boosts creativity, and impacts our everyday lives. The academic experts from Writing Help also specified the influence of travel experiences on students’ academic success and career prospects.

So, if you are a college student or a career-switching person, keep reading to learn the extra benefits you can get from traveling the world.

1. Zero Academic Burnout

The term “burnout” defines a physical and psychological condition a person feels after multitasking and overworking for a long time. It’s a combination of stress, anxiety, and exhaustion, which has nothing in common with the fatigue we might experience after a busy week.

Burnout is a physical, mental, and emotional reaction leading to social disconnection and the inability to keep up productive work.

The term “academic burnout” is inherent in college students. It’s a reaction to academic overload or prolonged study without breaks or vacations, resulting in frustration, lack of motivation, and physical inability to maintain academic performance and productivity. (Increased pain and tension in the body are among the core symptoms of academic burnout.)

Traveling is the perfect cure for that.

It’s your chance to take a break and thus avoid overworking. Breaks are critical for productivity and health: They reduce stress, help reevaluate our goals, and restore motivation to work, leading to increased job satisfaction.

Travel allows you to escape daily obligations and routines. Disconnecting from familiar surroundings, you find an alternative energy source to recharge your “battery.” After a day or week getaway, you return home stress-free, refreshed, and ready to deal with complex tasks at work or school.

2. New Ideas for Work and Study

Traveling boosts creativity.

When in new environments, creativity and imagination run wild. Out of your comfort zone, you may notice your sense of purpose changes, ideas come, and your motivation and ability to create sparks. It’s because travel affects your perception and boosts innovative thinking:

It activates the brain areas responsible for experience, making you find inspiration at any corner: architecture, arts, street conversations you hear while walking, beautiful nature — invaluable for brainstorming ideas and planning new projects.

Traveling generates new concepts for a startup, a study, or a book. (Why not become a bestselling writer, not afraid of any plagiarism checker, after all?) New surroundings, cultures, and languages around you serve for self-discovery: You may find interests or skills that you haven’t noticed before.

3. Enriched Cultural Background

Cultural competency is critical for academic and professional success, and regular travels allow you to reach it. When you contact and learn various customs, traditions, and beliefs, you enhance your emotional intelligence and become open to diversity.

Traveling is your practical course on history and geography, leading you to personal growth and tolerance toward different social groups. The increased cultural awareness makes you more open-minded and accepting of other people.

All this works for a more successful study and career. Cultural competence is a big plus when working in global markets, international business, or diplomacy. More than that, traveling promotes language learning and boosts communication skills:

Interacting with people from different languages and backgrounds, you learn to express your thoughts and articulate your arguments and requests. Also, you boost active listening and enhance critical- and analytical thinking skills.

4. Networking

Travels offer extra opportunities for professional development, allowing you to expand the network in your field.

If you’re a college student, you can spend a semester studying abroad. Several months in another country, when you live with locals and communicate with the international community, can influence you by far! New friends with other views and cultural backgrounds help expand your knowledge and build connections for valuable career collaborations.

Another option is attending and participating in conferences or workshops abroad. Meeting and talking to new people there allows growing your social capital for a win-win partnership in the future: scholarships, internships, job opportunities, career prospects, etc.

Travel is also about boosting your leadership skills. Even if you’re a shy introvert or non-self-reliant enough, you’ll have to manage your travel plan, organize everything (tickets, accommodations, activities), and be proactive, especially when you’re a solo traveler. It can help you develop leadership qualities you’ll apply to your academic activities or career.

5. Inspiration for Experiments and New Perspectives

The more you travel, the more you learn. Regular traveling encourages a curious mindset, motivating you to reveal more details about history, art, food, and other things about the place you visit. You become open to experiments and unafraid of trying out the unknown: new meals, custom rituals, etc.

Such a “rebellion” and proactivity in stepping out of the comfort zone can do wonders:

You learn to see regular things from a different perspective. After traveling, you might find yourself more motivated and inspired to try alternative approaches to work, sign up for new projects, or try your hand at something atypical for you.

Moreover, studies say that people who travel perform better at work and become open to new job opportunities. Travels increase self-awareness and trust, influence our confidence, encourage empathy, and make us more open to life-changing events. Encountering unfamiliar situations abroad, we reflect on our values and deeds, understanding them better and adjusting them accordingly:

Adapting to new environments allows us to grow problem-solving skills. (As you understand, they are essential for academic and career success in fast-paced and constantly changing conditions.)

Stress- and time management skills are also here:

Travels teach us to handle uncertainty, a skill we often need at the workplace. When planning and making a trip, we also learn to set SMART goals, prioritize, and meet deadlines — all critical to mastering productivity and work-life balance.

It’s your turn now:

Do you agree with our statements and arguments from this article? How do travels change you and influence your mindset, motivation, and productivity? Please don’t hesitate to share your insights in the comments.