All walks of humanity rarely cross paths.

We typically choose to hang around people that are like ourselves: we eat with them, live with them, study with them, and they become our basis of comparison against ourselves.

Even just inhabiting a college campus cuts us off from many walks of life; while we are all different, we all have things in common, such as simply being college students.

So, what is a quick, easy and harmless way to experience lifestyles outside our own?

The Amtrak.

Over spring break I visited a friend in Washington, D.C., via Amtrak. Though the ride lasted about 16 more hours than a flight would have, I saved about $300 doing so.

Relatively cheap, seemingly endless hours of vegging out time and a gorgeous view weaving through the Appalachian Mountains — I was sold.

And apparently many other people were as well.

Once I stepped onto the train I headed to the top level and snagged the window seat. Soon after I got settled, my seatmate arrived. She was a woman in her mid-twenties, traveling to D.C. to visit friends. Hours later, when we woke up outside the shimmering city of Cleveland, she told me about her train ride from her home state, Iowa, to Chicago. There was an old man with a distinct smell sitting in front of her who was constantly passing her to go to the bathroom. Later, an announcement was made over the speaker that if the person who was smoking marijuana in the bathroom didn’t stop, they would bring in the K-9 unit. 

As my seatmate and I continued to get acquainted, I observed everyone else heading to their seats.

For one, there were the Amish.

With the rise of the Industrial Revolution, the Amish began to reject modern inventions such as the telephone because they weakened community cohesiveness. While the Amish’s typical mode of transportation is the horse and buggy, they can use the train as an alternative to travel longer distances.

A group of about 10 Amish individuals were on my car of the train, and one young couple sat directly in front of me. They spoke Pennsylvania Dutch and were not married, for the man was clean-shaven, a trait that denotes a single man. The rest of the group, which comprised a couple and a parade of children, sat in the back of the train car. The girls donned skirts and long braids since they are not allowed to cut their hair. The boys had choppy mushroom-bowl cuts.

Simply being in these people’s presence made me self-conscious about what I was wearing and doing. Lounging in sweats and a sweatshirt, my hair loose and listening to music on my phone made me feel like a wild child compared to them.

But I quickly returned to my senses when I turned my attention to a trio containing two men and one woman, all a little scruffy-looking. Throughout the entire train ride they were yucking it up about seemingly nothing. The woman, in her twenties I’d say, was constantly moving between cars while yelling to her best friends. Maybe the rest of the car would have thought the jokes were funny if we could have made them out, but mostly we could only hear the bombastic guffaw of the largest man of the group. However, what really caught my attention with this group was when the woman stated very loudly that her best friend was in prison, after which she followed up with a list of the drugs she had and hadn’t done. Mind you, this whole conversation took place while holding her child.

Somehow, I was able to sleep awkwardly in a chair through all of this and emerged from the train 18 hours later into the bright sunshine of D.C.

So am I glad that I chose to ride the Amtrak? You bet I am.

That little train ride reminded me that college students are only a sliver of the population of this planet. For about four years, we maintain an existence in the bubble of Champaign-Urbana, not necessarily needing to venture out. What we rarely come across are people with completely different lives than our own, that have extremely different views, beliefs and life and career goals.

There are opportunities for us to see and experience other demographics, but we do not take advantage of many of them.

But we should. Seeing other walks of life can be humbling; it can help you regain focus with what you’re doing with your life, and it can help put society into perspective. So, the next time you need to travel long distance, save a buck and hop on the Amtrak. You’ll get a lot more out of it than simply arriving at a destination.

Kirsten is a sophomore in Media. She can be reached at [email protected].