Travel is best experienced during those post-college years of sweet, sweet freedom, and there's a reason for this. A few ones, in fact, and all of them have contributed to the somewhat stereotypical notion of getting out and seeing the world as much as you can during the scarce little bit of turnaround time you'll get between graduating with honors and having to report for duty behind a desk all day. We'll talk about some of the most popular (and most compelling) reasons why you should take advantage of your first few years of educational freedom to get some miles logged on your travel-o-meter.

You're Truly Free for the First Time

You're not imagining that strangely unencumbered sense of full-blown freedom that you experience when you've finally graduated college. If you feel like it's something you've never felt before, then you're entirely right. When you graduate college, for the first time (and probably for one of the only times) you're almost entirely without any kind of long-term obligation. You're completely done with school for the first time ever, and likely haven't begun your career or committed to a serious, full-time job yet. There will probably never be such freedom in your life ever again, so you should take full advantage of it.

Your Financial Responsibilities Are Minimal

Graduation is typically the time parents stop really going out of their way to make it easy on their kids, mostly because they're not kids anymore. It's your turn to start being a sufficient adult, so you're likely to find yourself needing to pay for things like groceries, rent, and a lot of the other little things that you might not have realized could cost so much. Well, traveling brings with it its own set of expenses, but it's a decent way to dodge having to
come up with a serious income for a couple of years. Saving money is way easier to do on the road than it is when you're trying to stay settled in one place.

You're Only Responsible for Yourself

Surprisingly enough, it's not easy to take off and see the world when you've got other people for whom you're responsible. Taking off and having a good look at the planet before you've set down your roots is always the safest way to go. You might just not have the opportunity to do the things you'll be able to do right after college later on in life, and there's no way to predict what kind of hand we'll be dealt.

You're Healthy

Your body can handle a lot more wear and tear when you're younger, which is another reason why it's smartest to push it to its limits when you're in your prime and just finishing up school. You'll only have a tougher time getting around the older you are, so all that hiking, swimming, running, jumping, and climbing that you want to do should be important to you when you're younger and much less likely to suffer severe consequences if anything goes wrong.

You'll Learn Valuable Life Lessons

A lot can be said for the kinds of experiences we have when we finally liberate ourselves from life as we've known it. Thorough post-college travel can be just such an experience, and when you're young, eager, and ready to try and leave your mark on the world is when these experiences will serve you best. Whether you get to learn from masters in sustainability or just experience something you've never seen before, there are a lot of ways that post-college travels can leave their mark on the rest of your adult life.