Uruguayan Beach Xavierite Staff
Being a college student, especially a senior, can be strange. For four years, you have to navigate a blend of classes, some that you need, most that you don’t, all to receive a piece of paper that makes you eligible to work in a job you might not even like.
Through these four years, while you balance work, friendships, family life, school, and who knows what else; you’re just hoping that you made the right choice to attend the school that you do, or to have picked the major that you did.
All the while, you’re pondering if going to college was even the right choice. You can’t help but picture a million different alternative endings for your own story, picturing where you would be standing if you hadn’t followed the typical path of the American young adult: the first steps of the ‘American Dream.’
When the time comes to finally cross that stage, you find yourself stuck in the job search phase, navigating through jobs until you find the one that makes you the least miserable and you stick with it until you’re too old to work. That’s just how it goes.
Like many college students across America, I spend a lot of time wondering where exactly my future is taking me, and if I’m ever going to be able to work myself up the ladder of the idolized, ‘American Dream.’ But, over Christmas break, I had the chance to break free from that path and travel outside the country.
I had the chance to spend two weeks in a small town in Uruguay, the tiniest, most beautiful country sandwiched between the legendary giants that are Brazil and Argentina.
For two weeks, I lived a different life—one very far away from the one of the “perfect college student.”
During my time there, I saw how different society functions in Uruguay.
For starters, most people do not go to a university or college. The ones who do continue their education past high school, usually do so in a technical school where they learn only what they need for the career they want to go into.
Once someone finishes high school, whether they continue their education or not, it takes a while for them to move out of their parents’ home. People like to take their time to save up their money so that once they do move out, they do so into a place that makes them happy, and not the first shady studio apartment they can afford.
Another difference in lifestyles between America and Uruguay is that families stick together. Because Uruguay is so small, unless someone moves out of the country, families are still able to be with each other without having to take a plane and plan a whole vacation to see each other.
But the biggest difference I saw is how happy and free people are in Uruguay. All of this freedom and joy is so easily seen in the fact that people’s lives don’t revolve around their educational and work lives.
Uruguayans aren’t forced by their societal expectations to dedicate their entire lives to what they study and where they work.
In the summertime, most Uruguayans will finish their job at 5 p.m., and by 5:30 they’ll be out by the river with their families, sharing a midday snack, rather than coming home with leftover schoolwork or tasks that they have to dedicate themselves to for the rest of the night.
This type of lifestyle that does not revolve around one’s educational or work life could easily be considered as one of the factors that has resulted in Uruguay placing as the 19th happiest country out of 91 participating countries. Additionally, as part of this ranking process, 90.8% of surveyed Uruguayans stated they were either “happy,” or “very happy.”
When I was in Uruguay, I most certainly felt this joy become part of my life. There, I didn’t have to worry about the hundreds of deadlines waiting for me at Saint Xavier, or about meeting five years of experience for an entry level job.
I didn’t have to be the perfect college student that everyone wanted me to be. I had a freedom I had never felt before.
This freedom that came to me, far far away from the life I’ve always known in Chicago, forced me to ask myself an important question. If I continue to follow this traditional path of the ‘American Dream’: graduate, get a job, get married, get promoted, have kids- am I really going to be free? Am I really going to be happy?
Is this perfect mold I have to fill just an illusion? Maybe I will never be brave enough to ship myself away with a one way ticket to Uruguay and maybe I’ll never know what my life could possibly look like if I dared to dream. But at least I’ll be able to say I got a small taste of freedom even if it was just for a few weeks.
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