Roadtrip Nation Students on Finding Passion

In this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, Mason Pashia sits down with Joana Ponce and Catherine Alves, featured in Roadtrip Nation’s Explore Your Interests, for a thoughtful conversation about passion, purpose, and the messy reality of career exploration. Together, they reflect on how exposure to new people and possibilities helped them rethink the idea of a single “right” path, and why learning to navigate uncertainty may be one of the most important skills young people can build. From journalism and activism to climate work and community-based learning, this episode is a powerful reminder that fulfilling futures are rarely linear—and that sometimes the most important step is simply staying open to what comes next.

Outline

• (0:00) Introduction & Poetry
• (2:10) Non-Linear Career Paths
• (5:14) What Is Roadtrip Nation?
• (22:09) Passion, Purpose & Career Advice
• (29:11) What’s Next

Introduction & Poetry

Mason Pashia: You are listening to the Getting Smart podcast. I’m Mason Pashia. Today we circled the simple question of how does one find their passion and live a fulfilling life?

Because poetry has played such a foundational role in my own personal and professional life, I thought that I would start us with two short poems to set the scene for today. One is from one of my favorite poets, Rilke, and this poem goes like this: I live my life in widening circles, spread out across the world.

I may not complete this next one, but I give myself to it. Circling around God, around that primordial tower. I’ve been circling for a thousand years and I still don’t know. Am I a falcon, a storm or a great song? And this one is from the poet Rumi. Thanks for the nod, Catherine. This one is from Rumi:

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Today, I’m joined by Joana Ponce and Catherine Alves, featured road trippers in the Roadtrip Nation documentary Explore Your Interests. Thank you both for being here today.

Catherine Alves: Yeah, it’s a pleasure.

Joana Ponce: It’s a pleasure to be here, Mason.

Mason Pashia: These poets,

Joana Ponce: Mm-hmm.

Mason Pashia: they wrote in 1300 and 1800-ish, into the 1800s. And they were asking the exact same questions that we are all still asking today. So I think that they ground us in a sense of long-time trying to figure out what you want to do when you grow up and what questions you want to answer.

So I’m grateful to talk to you both about that today. It’s a topic that is very near and dear to my heart in many ways, and core to what we’re trying to figure out at Getting Smart. So I’m really excited to learn from you and alongside you. I want to start us off with the question,

Non-Linear Career Paths

Mason Pashia: when did you first realize that career pathways are messy and non-linear?

Joana Ponce: Growing up as an immigrant, and this is such an important core story of who I am as a person, I’ve just grown up to watch my family just do what you can to make money and never really have a passion behind what you want to do, just what has to be done and what you can do in order to provide. So it looks messy to me, but not in, like, I’m going to jump around and figure out what I want to do, but in terms of, I have to feed my family, so I’m going to do whatever I can. So I grew up watching my uncles and my aunts do a little bit of everything, just to have some sense of stability.

Catherine Alves: For me I realized it a little bit later. I believe I really realized this on the road trip, to be honest, because most of my life, my parents are working class, my relatives are also working class. And so growing up I’ve always been told pick a career, stick with it, aim to get it.

And after you get it, you are with that for basically the rest of your life. And, mind you, I didn’t really like a lot of the career paths that, you know, people heard of, like the 16 career paths. I didn’t like any of them. And so I was just like, all right, I got to pick one and then that’s my life till the day I die. But it really wasn’t until the road trip where I got to really understand that not everybody follows one path. There’s no one straight path. People change careers. Even though I realize that now after a lot of my relatives are now changing careers, I’m like, wow, wish this came earlier.

So after the fact, it’s OK. But yeah, really thanks to the road trip, I could understand that you don’t have to work one thing and stay at that one thing. It’s OK to not want to do something conventional or it’s OK to not know. Like, I still don’t know.

And I’m a junior in college, so what does that say? And just allowing myself to really explore and to be OK with not knowing and not having one straight path.

Mason Pashia: Absolutely. Yeah. I think that being comfortable with uncertainty is just so core to this whole conversation. Also partially why I love poetry so much. So way to end with that, that brings a nice tidy circle. And I think what you just said about changing careers and recognizing it now after you’ve seen it, like you went on Roadtrip Nation and then you noticed your own family doing that.

I think that’s how this works in some ways. First you have to see it to then see it again. But also, I think that’s partially just the new economy. I don’t remember the numbers offhand, but it’s something about Gen Z and younger generations, and even millennials, myself included, are going to change jobs like 15 times in their lifetime.

And many of those are going to be actual sector leaps, not just like getting a linear promotion in the same company. So super interesting. It makes this conversation really timely. Catherine, you mentioned a road trip a few times. For our listeners who don’t know what you’re talking about,

What Is Roadtrip Nation?

Mason Pashia: what is Roadtrip Nation if they’ve maybe seen the green van in a thumbnail somewhere or something? But tell them a little bit about what Roadtrip Nation is and maybe even how you found out about them.

Catherine Alves: So real quick, Roadtrip Nation is an educational, no, I’m reading this from Google, sorry. Roadtrip Nation is an educational nonprofit organization that helps people define their own careers by exploring and interviewing different people that we might be interested in. I know for us, our theme was exploring interests, and we got to kind of do it. Like I know me personally, when I applied, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was in my freshman year of college. I’m like, dang. I was trying to go into foreign service, but that kind of dropped. I was in a program with USAID, but unfortunately the department dropped, so my program dropped, and so my path, my one straight path to foreign service, disappeared before my eyes.

And so I’m like, OK, there goes my one path. Now I’m stuck at square one. So I actually applied to Roadtrip Nation because on a little career youth program thing, they had a viewing like, oh hey, come explore your interests, Roadtrip Nation. I was like, you know what? I don’t know what I want to do in my life. Let me just go for it and hope for the best. And lucky for me, I was selected as one of the three to go on the awesome, amazing road trip with the iconic green bus. So if you’ve ever seen it driving on a highway or just stopped on the side of the road, big green RV that says Roadtrip Nation on the side. I got to travel across the country through it. Very fun. And I got to really understand the message of Roadtrip Nation: explore different career paths.

Mason Pashia: Super cool. And Joana, how’d you hear about Roadtrip Nation?

Joana Ponce: So I had actually never heard of them until my friend sent me, me and my friend do this thing where we always try to find opportunities to get out of the state and go figure out what we want to do. So as a joke, we’ll send each other work opportunities in Australia or things to do like that.

And then he sent me this ad for the Roadtrip Nation Explore Your Interests application. And I was like, this sounds exactly like what I want to do because I don’t even know what I want to do. And so I just applied and I was

Mason Pashia: That’s awesome. That’s a great practice to get into, and every friend should have another friend who’s looking out for cool opportunities for their friend, themselves, et cetera. And so it sounds like you had a really cool cross-country experience where you got to talk with a ton of different professionals and talk to them about different phases of their careers or just their lives.

Lessons From the Road

Mason Pashia: How long was this road trip? What did you learn along the way? What was something that you were nervous about before you went and then was actually OK when you got out there, or something that you were like, I’m glad I was nervous about this because that was actually hard? Any of those questions that feel interesting, feel free to jump in.

Catherine Alves: So on the road trip, one of the biggest things I was nervous about was probably, at first, going with three different people that I had never met before. That turned out to be the least of my worries because Joana and Arno are honestly the greatest people ever.

I literally think of them as my extended siblings. We could relate so much, and we’re all in the same place of, hey, we’re living through, navigating through life, not knowing what we want to do. So we all can relate. So it was really easy, like sharing with each other our stories, our passions, our interests, but then not exactly knowing how to either pursue them or if it’s even realistic or if it’ll give us money, if we can live off it. Things like that, important stuff. And then also, I’d never been to some parts of the country, so I was like, OK, road trip. I love road trips, but I’ve never driven an RV. I’ve never traveled that far without my family before, because usually when I do road trips, I go with siblings, parents.

And also one of the biggest things was I couldn’t plan anything. Not exactly couldn’t plan anything, like they helped us, like, OK, we’re going to do this day. But sometimes they wouldn’t tell me. And I’m very much a planner, so not knowing, like I said before, trying not to freak out, but not knowing, really messed with my mind.

It all turned out really well and wasn’t bad, but that was the biggest thing. But being on the road trip really just, one of the biggest things was also helping me to be OK. Like I said earlier, I don’t have to know everything and 20 years, 21 years is not enough to set your entire life plan in order.

Because you never know, the world is changing, jobs are changing, even different paths are changing. Being on that road trip really allowed me to really open up my mind to like, hey, what else do I want to do, but I told myself in the past I can’t do because it won’t give me a job or I can’t live off it.

I’ll be a starving artist. Things like that.

Mason Pashia: Some would say a life is not long enough to figure out what to do with your life.

Catherine Alves: Exactly.

Mason Pashia: That, like, 21 years is definitely not enough. So Joana, how about you?

Joana Ponce: Yeah, so going into the road trip, I didn’t really even know what I liked to do. But at one point we spoke to a leader, and I hate that I forgot who said this, but they were talking about remembering what you liked to do when you were young or something that you always wanted to be when you were young.

And I had completely forgotten that I was really into writing and really into journalism, really into radio and stuff. And as we went along and spoke to leaders like that, we spoke to Frannie Thomas, who was a DJ manager at KEXP, which is one of the biggest listener-based radio stations in the world.

And she basically was telling me these things are possible for you and that you can be passionate about it, even if at first it doesn’t really seem like it’s going to happen. Because she had to go through her family telling her this wasn’t really a thing that she could do. But as I was talking to people like that throughout the road trip, they all had college education and I didn’t have that.

So I was beginning to feel a little discouraged because that’s such a big roadblock for me in my life, having access to higher education. So I was like, OK, if they got here because of college education, then I’m definitely not going to be there because I don’t have this. But eventually we did end up talking to Stacey Givens in Portland, and she was telling us about her life as a farm-to-table chef and how she got there just through building community instead and out of her love, her passion for cooking, and without a college education.

And that’s when I finally was starting to feel some sort of relief that I was like, OK, so it is possible. I just have to make that road myself.

Mason Pashia: That’s awesome. Also, I live in Seattle, so shoutout KEXP. Glad they got a nod. OK. So that’s really helpful, I think, grounding. And how long is the road trip? Is it like a month? Is it longer? Shorter?

Joana Ponce: It’s three weeks.

Mason Pashia: OK. Nice. So-ish, that’s a long time and a substantial amount of time with people you don’t know and a very concentrated dose of trying to figure out what you want to do with your life, which is exciting and probably intense.

I think that’s one of the things that is so valuable about the college experience, and that’s actually meta of what this is. People don’t tell you that’s what college is for, but it is that random late-night conversation with other people at the same phase of life just about what you want to do.

And it sounds like, Joana, even though you have not traditionally participated in that experience, the three weeks in the van is probably a really good representation of it. Like you probably got what you needed out of it. That is what that is. It’s being in the same place as similar people, having those conversations so you’re not just alone trying to figure it out.

So

Joana Ponce: Yeah,

Mason Pashia: really cool.

Joana Ponce: Yeah, that was like the first time in my life where I was around people who had that same feeling, who had those same thoughts, and that exposure just really did a lot for me. And after I came back from the road trip, I actually felt so weird and out of place coming back.

Because I was like, I don’t have these people here. I only had them when I was gone. So what do I do now?

Mason Pashia: Yeah, I’m sure that’s a real feeling. I want to zoom in a little bit while you’re on the road trip. So you have three weeks, you’re talking to people. It’s very easy to talk about careers without getting any interesting or useful information. People can just tell you their own experience and they went to college, knew a person, got a job, boom, you’re on a pathway, and then that will ebb and flow.

But it’s really hard to actually distill a journey into something that is applicable to yourself, which, Joana, you just alluded to with how you were talking to people and they had a journey that looked different than yours. But how did you start to bridge that gap as individuals, then as a group, when you’re actually talking to people and asking them questions?

Like how did that start? First interview, were you asking questions that you were just like, oh, that’s actually not a useful question, I’m going to throw that out. And then by the last interview you’re asking different questions. How did you build the skill of actually understanding where people got to, I guess is the succinct way to ask that question.

Catherine Alves: I know for me when we were first initially preparing for our first interview, one of the things I asked is like, what questions do you want to ask these people? And at first, when I think of talking to somebody in a career path, I’d be like, where’d you go to school?

What was your major? Or what qualifications did you get to do this? But then as the trip started to progress, it started getting into, what are some morals that you want to take to your career, or how do you feel fulfilled in, like, do you feel fulfilled in this job?

Are you looking to actually transition at one point? And if you are, how would you go about doing that? And what are other career paths you yourself are exploring? As we progressed through the road trip, right now, me personally, I started to transition from the generic, like, what did you do?

How’d you get there? The normal one-way, one-career-path thing. But most people had multiple career paths and multiple jobs and careers. So I was like, I can’t really ask that because there’s just so many. So I started thinking more outside the box and really just trying to understand. I know for me it’s just like how to pursue other paths or how do you just make that switch? I know one of the questions I wish I asked and I regret not asking to this day is, if you were a Barbie doll, like, Barbie can do anything and everything, what would be your career paths? And it’s still questions I even ask every time I interact with maybe a professor or I go to a conference. I’m like, hey, I really like what you’re doing now. Is this it? Are you going to transition? What’s your passion? What’s your dream? Where are you going now? And if you don’t know, how do you take that next step?

So basically I’ve just, as I started understanding more about it’s OK to not just do one thing and just go one path, started thinking like, how can I expand this? How can I explore it?

Joana Ponce: Yeah. So I think for me, I was super nervous that first interview. And Catherine can tell you, I was just low-key freaking out in the RV. I was like, oh my gosh. I don’t know what to say. What if I stutter? What if it’s not good? And we just had a chill little jam session real quick before we walked in there. But my first conversation, I think, started with whys, like why did you do this? Why did you pick this? But then quickly, literally right after the first conversation or even midway through, we started asking how, like how did you get into this? How are you happy doing this?

How are you going to keep going? How do you overcome doubt that you’re even good enough here, or how did you fight the expectations that this wasn’t a possible career path for you? Or how did you manage to create this path for yourself when nobody else believed in you?

Just things like that. And it just became more human than corporate, I guess would be the best way I can describe it.

Mason Pashia: Yeah, that’s what I’ve always really appreciated about Roadtrip Nation. It’s a masterclass in navigation, not in careers. Careers are a byproduct of the actual skill that’s being learned, which is how to navigate life. And I think that is so key and something that’s been personally a challenge or an obstacle over the last five or so years when we’ve been talking about pathways. A pathway is so rarely aligned, and it’s so much more about getting off of a pathway and then getting back onto a different one or back onto the same one. But it’s really about that exit, that off-ramp and that on-ramp again.

And I think asking people about how they navigated that, if they’re happy now, if they’re thinking about what’s next, like what does your current life afford you that is a non-negotiable for you now, and that is something that I think is increasingly getting added to some career curriculum, but pretty slowly. It’s not at the same level that it could be.

My own personal experience with this was I studied songwriting and music business in college, which, like, cool, but there was also not a lot of discussion about what it actually means to make money as this person. There was a little bit, but there are so many fine arts schools in high school, or there are so many people who are freshmen or sophomores in college and they want to do songwriting or they want to be a musician.

And you get no visibility into what that actually means when it’s really useful to actually know. To make money as a songwriter, you have to do all of these things that you really don’t want to do, and that’ll give 7% of your day to write music. And is that what you want?

And I think that’s a balance of how much of your day do you actually get to spend doing the thing that you love or doing things that you tolerate versus things that make you truly miserable and start to take out of other parts of your life is really interesting. How did you navigate that part of the conversation?

Like is that something that people were forthcoming with? Had they done that introspection, or did you feel like you were revealing something to them a lot when you were asking these questions?

Joana Ponce: A lot of people didn’t understand the value of their journey until they sat down with us and explained it all in detail. And then toward the end they were like, wow, actually I did do a lot and I had to overcome a lot. Especially Frannie Thomas was like that. Lisa at the Suquamish Museum was like that. There was also, we interviewed this wildlife conservationist, her name was Yani Lopez in Idaho. And she was actually a little younger, about our age or a little younger. And when she sat down and talked about all these things, she also was very real about, I was scared, but I did it anyway.

And to this day I’m still scared, but I still do it anyway. So I think it was more so a moment for introspection for them, on the spot, but also a moment where they could just be honest about their feelings because they know we probably feel the same way.

Catherine Alves: I definitely agree that it was definitely the latter because I know I remember talking with Blair Armani and she was saying, yeah, she had something she loved to do and then she combined it with something that she was already pursuing. And so she just, I remember when she was telling us her story, I think she did realize, hey, I actually did do a lot of stuff. And a lot of the paths that got her to it, it just happened.

Just opportunities arose and life happens. I don’t know if it’s the Lord or I don’t know if destiny or whatever, but they did get to where they were today because of all those combined passions, interests and just fate. And it’s really cool hearing that because, like I said, again, I knew only one path, one way, this way, and that’s your life.

So really hearing and seeing that there’s not only one way things could happen, the Lord does work and stuff, and you eventually maybe will find out, but sometimes you don’t know it.

Joana Ponce: Yeah, and it feels like it was a little bit more of determination and passion and being in love with what they do. They couldn’t compromise that and they couldn’t let that go. So they just kept following that little light and it got them where they were.

And I think that was really foundational, the main key between all of the leaders we interviewed was they didn’t give up, essentially.

Passion, Purpose & Career Advice

Mason Pashia: Do you think this experience has made you believe more that your passion should be what you do or can be what you do, or has it made you think that is one of a multitude of lives that somebody can live in a way that is fulfilling?

Catherine Alves: I know for me, I think it definitely opened my eyes to something I probably should do because if I don’t have a passion for what I am doing, I’m not going to have the motivation to keep doing it. And I know it might sound like some Gen Z or trying-to-be-lazy stuff, and it’s really not.

But it’s because I don’t,

Mason Pashia: I wasn’t reading that into it.

Catherine Alves: I know, like I talked to my dad about this and he’s like, oh, y’all youngsters and stuff. And I’m like, no, I’m being for real. I have to do what I love because that’s the thing that’s going to get me up in the morning. That’s the thing that’s going to drag me to my job. I know growing up I was told you’re not going to love what you do, but I’ve been opened up to I can do what I love and maybe my passion can be my career without being poor, no money, on the street, a starving artist or something, like they’ve told us, like teachers have told us unfortunately. But I’m definitely more now trying to explore what careers are out there that align with my morals, which is huge for me, and my passions and my interests because I don’t want to shortcut those.

Joana Ponce: Yeah, so I think that your passions obviously aren’t going to be linear. As you grow older and you learn more about different things in life, you’re going to obviously fluctuate and you’re going to jump here and there. So there’s no reason for that to be the same thing for your career.

And on the road trip, we did talk to a lot of people who were super passionate about what they do. And even some of the strangers along the way, they were honest about their jobs. I spoke to an Uber driver in Spanish in San Francisco, and he was like, no, I don’t like my job.

I’m miserable. He was like, but I have to feed my family. So it’s like this dichotomy of survival and passion, but I don’t think it has to be one or the other. I just don’t think enough people know that opportunity exists for them. And so I just think that you can change your mind and that you can jump from here and there.

And honestly, at the end of the day, you only have one life to live. So you should just be passionate about what you do because if you spend your whole life just trying to survive and trying to make it, then you didn’t really live.

Mason Pashia: Absolutely. Yeah. I think something you’re alluding to: the day in, day out of what you do might not necessarily be what you love to do. Something we think about a lot at Getting Smart is rather than ask somebody what they want to be when they grow up, what do they want to do? It’s better to ask, what question do you want to answer? Or what problem do you want to solve?

And that can look super different. If you’re super passionate about climate change, that can be you’re a line worker fixing electrical lines, or that can be you are somebody who works as a sustainability consultant, or you can be a policymaker. That opens up this huge avenue for jobs when you think about it through that lens. And then technically, you’ll have days where you’re like, man, I really don’t want to do this today. But at the end you’re like, but I am working toward this thing that really matters to me at my core. And maybe that changes over time, but maybe those are actually a little bit stickier and stick around longer with us.

So I think that’s really smart. What do you think, if you had to give advice to career counselors on that who might be listening to this, whether that be a formal career counselor at a school or just a mentor, how would your experience, I guess, what would you tell them about your experience to maybe help them help young people better?

Maybe thinking about high school students specifically.

Joana Ponce: Definitely exposure, exposing them to people who do these things, who are in love with what they do, and showing them that this is a real possibility that exists for you. Because when I grew up in high school, I didn’t have anybody showing me that these pathways exist, that these careers exist.

It was just, you go to school, you do your ACT, you go to college. That’s it. But there wasn’t any opportunity to learn and see people actually be happy in their lives because you’re not taught that. So I think just that exposure, exposing them to content, even if it’s not real people, exposing them to content where people are genuinely just in love with what they do to show that this exists.

Mason Pashia: Catherine, how about you? Anything to add there?

Catherine Alves: Yeah. Basically what Joana said, but then I also want to add the layer of don’t, I know in my experience, I was in a magnet program specifically for international studies, which I loved. But like Joana said, there wasn’t a lot of exposure to what else is out there on top of the encouragement. Because sometimes we don’t get that encouragement to actually pursue something else that isn’t very conventional. And it’s not just high school. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen it in even middle school and college even, because I’m a political science major. The career paths that they really demonstrate here are just law and then policymaking, which I like those two, but then I want to do more, and also connect different paths.

Like you’re interested in this, right? You can pursue this and this, or something else maybe to tie into it. But definitely what Joana said, and then just being able to encourage the creativity or just space to explore and for the students to be comfortable in their space to explore.

Mason Pashia: And places like Roadtrip Nation are making some of this easier. They’re, by posting these videos online, making it easier than getting in a van and driving across the country. You can just look it up and watch videos and interviews with some of these folks. They’ve now embedded some of their content in Edmentum to have some of their content more connected directly to classroom content, preexisting classroom content, to help make this more visible, more connected, which is super important.

What you just said, Catherine, makes me think of there’s a famous-ish interview with the author Stephen King, who’s talking about how to become a writer or something, and he’s like, if you want to become a writer, get good at writing. And then study anything else, but do not study writing. And he’s like, rather than go to school and get an MFA, you should go to school to do science and apply writing to that.

Do something else that you’re interested in and apply a skill set to it. Because that actually is where you find your unique voice. You can chase the thing that’s interesting to you and you’re not just swimming in this pool, this echo chamber of the same thing. So I think what you just said is really smart.

It’s about keeping multiple things alive, interdisciplinary connections, all that kind of stuff. Awesome. What do you think,

Shorts Content

What’s Next

Mason Pashia: what’s next for both of you? I know Catherine, you’re a junior. Joana, you have your hands full in some ways today, but you’re looking for what’s next, and I know you’re interested in radio, journalism, these other things.

But how are you both thinking about your next step forward, knowing that it might not be the final pathway that you end on?

Joana Ponce: Actually through Roadtrip Nation, they partner you with a career coach after, for six months. And my career coach actually helped me find a scholarship opportunity that pays for all four years of college. So in August, I’ll actually be going to college for journalism

Mason Pashia: Oh, amazing.

Joana Ponce: and stuff. So I’m really excited. And right now I’m interning with Brightbound and I’m really excited and I hope that continues going because I really do love working with them.

It’s nice to work with people who are passionate about young people exploring careers that they’re passionate about as well, and it’s been a very nice culture to be in, to be surrounded by people who are just so in love with this idea and that actually do their best to make that come to life. So I think that’s what’s next for me, just going to college now and figuring out if that’s really what I want to do or not. And if I change my mind, then I’ll change my mind.

Mason Pashia: So fun. We love Brightbound. We work with them all the time, so that’s a wonderful place to spend your time and energy. And congratulations. That’s super exciting. Catherine, how about you?

Joana Ponce: Thank you.

Catherine Alves: So for me, I’m currently going into my second semester at Florida A&M University as a junior. So like I said before, I’m a political science major, journalism minor. As of now, I’m still exploring what I want to do and I know now, after talking to my career coach and what I have my passion in, because I have a lot,

Mason Pashia: A good problem to have.

Catherine Alves: oh yeah, I know I do want to pursue activism. I do want to eventually get a doctorate in history and hopefully be a historian. I want to be in environmental, like an environmentalist. I know people usually do that in their fourth year, but then I also want to add in a little bit of, that’s why I’m minoring in journalism, independent journalism specifically on climate action and things that are going on now because a lot of things are being censored. On top of that, I also want to dabble a little bit into research, specifically on youth mental health. I know one thing I’m currently looking into is like, there’s this thing called hikikomori in Japanese, but it’s just like social isolation, like a complete shut-in. I know right now I’m looking into males specifically because I know somebody who experienced that.

And so I really want to explore why that happens, why it occurs, and how we can help. So I just have a lineup of things and I’ve just been open to ask myself, what do I want to do? What do I love and how can I pursue it? Because right now, the one-way, one-path didn’t work, and so now I’m open to anything and everything I want to do. So I might just become a real-life Barbie, maybe for the five, but yeah.

Mason Pashia: Do it. They have to make a sequel. There’s probably a way for you to monetize that easily in the film industry if you need to,

Catherine Alves: Like they need, Disney needs to hire me. I can help make, I write on the side too. I write stories. They need me.

Mason Pashia: That’s what I’m saying.

Catherine Alves: on the side too. I write stories. They need me.

Mason Pashia: Come on. I love that. My last question, just because you both said this, you’re both interested in journalism, it sounds like, from different places. But it’s interesting that both of you ended up at Roadtrip Nation, which is also a journalism project. So do you feel like you found it because of that affinity, or do you think that awakened that in you in a way that’s meaningful and lasting?

Joana Ponce: Yeah, so growing up I would always turn the radio on and listen to the morning show, getting ready for school, middle school, and waking up just extra early to catch that show. And also just watching my grandfather watch the Hispanic news network and keep track of what’s going on, where he’s from and where he wasn’t able to go back to, and just having that sense of home in his own home here, somewhere that he won’t be able to go back to, essentially. Those are little nuggets that kind of implanted themselves in me at a young age. And I always was like, oh, it’d be really nice to do this, but I’ll never go to college, so it’s not even going to happen. So it’s just whatever. It’s just a dream. But then after the road trip, it just solidified that desire of like, I do like connecting with people and I do love interviewing people and I love sharing people’s stories and I love being exposed to different perspectives and ideas, and I want other people to have access to that the way I’ve had access to that my entire life. So I think Roadtrip Nation just basically showed us that as an organization, it’s possible to do this.

Catherine Alves: I know for me personally, I grew up with my grandparents and so at night I used to have this set schedule of TV. And so I remember growing up watching the news with them a lot. And so in middle school I was like, hey, let me take a journalism class. Loved the journalism class, loved the teachers, the students, everything I learned. But then I remember we went on a field trip to a local news station.

And it was in the morning, so I could see they’re exhausted and I didn’t really like the feel of it and I was like, nah. But then thanks to Roadtrip Nation and not just choosing one path, I’m back to reopening that interest of mine. And then instead of exactly going to a local news station, I was really looking at independent journalism because I follow a lot of people on social media, on YouTube, on all these platforms who do their own research and do their own newscast, and I learn a lot from them. So I’m like, I don’t have to join CNN or, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that on air, like other major news companies, to be able to spread accurate and nonfiltered information.

To be honest, I start trusting them more. But I want to start being that and also have friends who tell me, like, I post a lot of that on my social media. I know Joana follows me, so she probably sees me keeping everybody updated on what’s going on. And I know a lot of my friends have come tell me, hey, you are the only reason I know what’s going on in the world right now because I have a deep interest in politics, international relations and just culture, and not just our culture, around the world.

So I’m starting to combine all of that and trying to get the news out there. Also, like Joana, I love interviewing. I love talking to people and making those connections.

Mason Pashia: That’s awesome. Thank you both for sharing your stories today. That’s super exciting. I have a couple people I might want to introduce you to. I may follow up after this based on what you said, but super cool. Thank you to Roadtrip Nation for making these videos, making this possible.

We’ll embed a few videos in this video just in case anybody listening is like, I’ve actually never watched one of those. So you can just check out what the vibe is, hear it from the people who are actually doing the work rather than me, who’s just trying to summarize their story in a different medium.

So it has been great chatting with you both and best of luck in whatever’s next.

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Guest Bio

Joana Ponce

Growing up as part of an immigrant family in Alabama, Joana has faced barriers to higher education and stable work, but she hasn’t let that stop her drive. She’s passionate about storytelling and the arts—specifically writing, film, and music—and as a single mother, she’s hungry to learn how others have followed those passions while providing for their families.

Catherine Alves

Catherine is a sophomore at Howard University, and right now, she has about a million ideas about what she could do with her life: urban planning, diplomacy, sustainable farming, sociology, and beyond. Still, there’s no one interest that’s clearly rising to the top for her—but she’s optimistic that this road trip journey will help her find clarity.

Links

• Watch the full video here
• Roadtrippers’ Journeys
• Roadtrip Nation