Ah, “The Big Trip,” we were patient and it definitely payed off. As is common for each year of PLP, we finally went on our big trip to a far away place to learn more about the subject at hand. In the case of this year, we went to California to learn about disruption…
I’ll save all our learning on disruption for another post, so for now, I’ll be talking about the trip itself. So why California? Well, during our unit on disruption, we’ve been focusing a lot on how technology itself disrupts the world and we talked a lot about startups, tech companies, certain people, and more. We also talked a lot about companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, etc. The interesting part about all those companies and the things I mentioned earlier is that they can all be found in Silicon Valley! It gets even better when schools like High Tech High are also located in California.
With all those things in mind, it seemed fit that a trip to California would be a perfect addition for our learning on disruption and technology. Without further adieu, here’s PLP’s 2018 trip to California!
DAY 1:
So we started off our day right… by going to the airport at 4:30 in the morning. Yay…
Anyways, we flew out to Seattle where we had a connecting flight to San Diego later that morning. One thing you’ll come to learn on PLP trips is that there’s usually not a lot of wiggle room on the itinerary so that meant as soon as we landed, we had to run to our rental vans and get to our first stop.
That first stop happened to be at Hodad’s where we ate some really good burgers and as soon as our burgers were gone, so were we… We then went to our next stop which was the Torrey Pines National Park. Afterwards, we got to go see more tourist spots in San Diego like La Jolla Cove and Coronado Beach. Feeling hungry and tired from a long day, we went to Miguel’s Cocina where we completely splurged on Mexican food. Overall, this day was insanely chill which was nice as it eased us in for the rest of our trip which would be a little more intense.
DAY 2:
Still feeling pretty tired from the previous day, we all jumped out of bed because we knew what day it was… it was zoo day! I can’t remember when the last time was when I went to a zoo so I felt pretty excited for this day. The thing is, this was no ordinary zoo, this was the San Diego Safari Park! I would say this was another pretty chill day as we got to spend a lot of it just getting to see the animals and learning about the Safari Park itself. This was a good day to start testing my mic as I knew sooner or later, interviews would need to be done. We ended up spending the whole day here which was really cool. It was definitely interesting to learn about the Safari Park’s purpose and how it manages to rehabilitate so many animals.
DAY 3:
After a pretty relaxing day at the Safari Park, we were ready to take on the USS Midway. As evident from the picture, the USS Midway is a huge carrier ship which was commissioned at the very end of WWII. The USS Midway was different from any other carrier at the time of its commission as it had an angled takeoff/landing deck for all different kinds of aircraft to land on. This led to the introduction of a whole line of Midway Carriers to the US Army back in the mid 1950’s. As you might expect, the advancement of technology slowly made the USS Midway obsolete and in 1992, it was decommissioned. Being one of the first of its kind and very unique, the USS Midway was then turned into a museum in 2004 and remains to be as such to this day. This was another really interesting day for me as we essentially had the whole day to walk around and explore the many things that the ship has to offer such as its armoury, bunks, mess halls, jails, and more. We also got to meet some of the people that served on the USS Midway and to be able to listen to their stories was a treat.
Day 4 and 5:
I know that I’m combining two days but that’s because for these two days, we went to High Tech High. There’s not much more I can say about our time at High Tech High which wasn’t already said on this separate post which is dedicated to our experience at High Tech High. Check it out!
DAY 6:
Our time to leave San Diego had come but we still weren’t done with California. After our last day at High Tech High, we flew out to San Jose where we would be focusing most of our time on Silicon Valley and the companies that reside there.
We started off by going to the Googleplex. Although we didn’t have someone who was actually from Google to come take us around, we settled for a self-guided tour around the Google campus and we got to see the unique features that were offered there such as an actual dinosaur just sitting in the grass, beach volleyball, swimming, mobile libraries, frequent refreshments, etc. What I noticed during our tours through different companies in Silicon Valley is that they’re meant to be as welcoming and comfortable as possible so that the workers feel encouraged to stay for longer and in a very dystopian perspective, so that they never leave… Nah, they’re just meant to keep the workers happy and productive!
Anyways, we continued on our journey through Silicon Valley and after Google, we went to brand new Apple Park! Actually, the Apple Park is closed off to the public but we got the next best thing… the Apple Park Visitor Center. Jokes aside, we got to have an actual tour around the area and we got to learn more about the design process and planning that went into both the Apple Park itself and the Visitor Center. One of the coolest things we did there though was the AR tour of the Apple Park itself as we got to see everything in and around it at any time in the day.
After Apple, we briefly went to the Intel Museum where we got to learn more about Intel’s history and the progression of its microprocessors.
We then went bowling where we got to talk to two tech giants who were named Scott and Brendan. Scott had worked on the original iPhone along with many other Apple projects. Brendan on the other hand, worked as a software engineer at a few companies like IBM but he eventually moved on to product management and currently works as Amazon. We had very in-depth discussions with them about the many aspects of Silicon Valley and companies/careers in general which I really enjoyed as they’re both living evidence of the success that can come out of Silicon Valley and I definitely value their input.
DAY 7:
This was probably one of my favourite days of the trip for me. Although we didn’t necessarily do anything spectacular that day, we visited one of my dream schools; Stanford. How does that saying go again, “shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars…”? Well, ever since my dad showed me Stanford when I was seven years old, it has always been my “moon” as I want to strive to go to that school. As long as I’m working hard enough to have a chance at Stanford, I’ll have a chance in a lot of other universities. When we finally got to go to Stanford, I was reallllly excited to see the school again and talk to one of the students who gave us a tour around the campus. We learned about the “Stanford Student Mindset,” the application process, and the history of the school. The first two things I mentioned were really valuable for me as I learned that Stanford doesn’t just target high school students with high grades, they also really focus on bringing well rounded students to the school who are unique and have their own special interests and hobbies.
Aside from going to Stanford, we also went to the Computer History Museum and the garage where HP was founded. Overall, this was a really cool day for me and I enjoyed it a lot.
DAY 8:
After our experience at Stanford, we travelled to San Fransisco to get our “tourist game” on!
This day was somewhat interesting in terms of scheduling as we ended up experiencing delays in our flight and problems with the transit system we were using. What resulted from this was a lack of wiggle-room for our schedule that day and we needed to give something up on our itinerary to make space for the rest of our day. Our options to give up were lunch and a clothing store called Undefeated. We all chose the reasonable thing to do and bailed on lunch to make room for our visit to Twitter and Undefeated.
Our first stop of the day was Twitter HQ and after a somewhat difficult time of trying to enter the building, we finally met up with our tour guides where they told us everything we needed to know about Twitter and working within the headquarters. We were also given some time to discuss working at Twitter, some of the challenges, and what Twitter looks for in its employees.
We then made our way to Undefeated where we had a quick shopping spree and promptly bused over to the Golden Gate Bridge where we simply went to go to enjoy the scenery and get some nice pictures. See? Our tourist game was on!
DAY 9:
The time had finally arrived… we were on our last day. As it was our last day, it seemed fit to try and take in as much of San Fransisco as we could before we had to go back home. The answer to this was a three hour walking tour around San Fransisco where we got to see some of the city’s most historically significant locations. Although I had dreaded the walking tour beforehand, I was actually very pleased with how it turned! I was originally expecting that we would be listening to long talks about some settlers of San Fransisco while we visited museums and memorials but instead, we got firsthand looks at the history and culture of San Fransisco during the mid to late 20th century. It was super crazy to experience as it seemed like every street had significant history with San Fransisco. We learned about the hippy and drug movement, the Castro and gay rights, and the reasons behind certain events that happened within the city. If you ever go to San Fransisco, I would really suggest going on the Wild SF Walking Tour with Wild Wes as it’s a walking tour you’ll never forget.
Afterwards, we visited Alcatraz where we got to feel like prisoners as walked around the prison. We got to see, hear, and feel lot’s of the things that the inmates of Alcatraz experience and it was almost haunting to walk through the most infamous prison on Earth as it was such an immersive experience.
DAY 10:
Ah, we finally make our way back home! At this point in the trip, I think it’s fair to say that all of us were pretty tired and were ready to come back home and see our families. I won’t go into too much detail about this day as it was just a dedicated day of travelling to get back home…
At this point in time, I also think it’s appropriate to mention that there was a project to go along with our trip as a whole. “What is the project” you may be asking? Well right before the trip, we were given an outline of a digital book. On this book, there were specific instructions for each page that we would fill out. Using the media and learning we obtained during the trip, we would compile everything we did during the ten days we were in California and we turned it into an interactive book which goes into detail about our experiences and our learning. Check it out!
In the end, this was a really valuable trip for me as I learned a lot about the business world and what it takes to be successful. Most of us in PLP have big goals for the future and it’s great that we got the opportunity to learn more about the adult working world along with other things like how companies work, what universities look for, etc. These trips give us opportunities to learn things that we would never learn in school and for that, I’m really happy that we got to go on the trip…
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