If you’ve ever dreamed of following your passions and creating a career you love, you might find some inspiration in this presentation I made during career week at the Corona Arts & Sciences Academy, a New York City middle school in Queens.
Usually in my travel blog, I share travel tips about destinations around Latin America. But this week I’ve decided to share something different and a bit more personal: the presentation I made during career week. In the video of my presentation, I share some of my back story about how I first got the travel bug, how and where I went to college and how I identified my passions and eventually became a travel writer.
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MEXICO TRAVEL TIPS: How to Treat Yourself to a Luxury Travel Experience at Brick Hotel Mexico City
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I had prepared a long script to read for this session, but it turned out the students were so amazingly smart that we cut off my canned presentation so they could ask me a bunch of really good questions (these were actually some of best interview questions I’ve ever been asked). But here, I’ve included the full written presentation (if this has piqued your curiosity and you want to know even more about my background, check out the interview I did with Humans of Travel, a podcast created by TravelAge West Magazine, and stay tuned; there’s a memoir coming out next year!).
How I Became a Travel Writer: An 8th Grade Career Week Presentation
My name is Mark Chesnut and I live in Jackson Heights, Queens. And I am a travel writer and photographer! My work has appeared in a bunch of different media outlets, some of which you might have heard of — Fodor’s, the Huffington Post, Orbitz, the Miami Herald, and the inflight magazines of American Airlines, Aeromexico and Avianca, for example.
Today, I’m gonna talk to you about my career and how I became a travel writer and followed my dreams. But I also want to talk a bit about how you should follow your passions in life, whatever they may be. You can turn them into something great. So as I’m talking, even if you’re not into travel or haven’t traveled much, I want you to think about what makes you excited and what your own passions are. FOR EXAMPLE, what are the things you like the most in school? And what are the things you most like to do when you’re NOT in school? With the right planning and a decent education, you can do some really surprising and cool things in your life.
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EXPAT LIFE: How to Live Well in Mexico City for $900/month or $65/night
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I love my job because I get to travel all over the world, have cool experiences, stay in amazing hotels, meet people from all over, and then take photos and write about my experiences. I also have my own travel blog called LatinFlyer.com as well as social media channels on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook.
I’ve done some pretty fun things. I’ve walked on the Great Wall of China, I’ve ridden a camel around the pyramids of Egypt and jumped off a cliff in Rio de Janeiro. I even celebrated Cinco de Mayo in the city where it was born: Puebla, Mexico.
But it’s not always fun. I work almost every day, and I get sick sometimes when I travel! I’ve puked in Austria, in Egypt, in Texas, in Ecuador and in Mexico. You never know what’s going to happen when you travel, but that’s part of the excitement, and it’s worth every minute.
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TRAVEL SMART: How to Snag the Best Travel Deals Before the Pandemic Ends
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I love my job because it’s allowed me to travel places and do things that I probably wouldn’t have been able to do with other jobs. I get paid to do things that most people only do on vacation!
I didn’t grow up with a lot of money or the ability to travel a lot. It was just my mother and me. But I always loved traveling, from a very young age. I was a creative and slightly weird kid, and I didn’t always fit in. But travel helped to take me to other places and understand that there’s excitement and acceptance in a lot of places. So no matter how things were going, I always looked forward to traveling with my mother. We went away to visit my grandparents in Kentucky multiple times every year, and that helped to give me the travel bug.
My mother helped to encourage me to follow my passions. I fell in love with collecting airline memorabilia, postcards and anything that had to do with travel.
The Importance of College
It was my love of travel — and my desire to find a place where I really belonged — that helped me to decide I wanted to go away to college.
College was a really important time for me, and it was also some of the most fun I’ve ever had. College really opens up your mind and your eyes in new ways — you meet new people, learn more about topics that really interest you, and get ideas about what you might want to do in the future. You’ll have more options and more control over your own life, regardless of what you choose to study.
My mother said I could go anywhere I wanted, as long as it was a state school since we didn’t have much money, and I ended up at the State University of New York at Albany, which I liked because it was a big city compared to where I was from, and because it was a 4.5-hour Greyhound bus ride from Brockport, so I had the distance I needed in order to feel like I was really on my own.
Important lesson: you don’t have to be rich to go to college. You can apply for financial assistance and scholarships, and you can choose more affordable colleges. Whatever you do, the long-term effect is similar: You’re going to have more options for doing great things with your life.
I didn’t even enter college with a specific career goal, but I gradually realized that writing and languages were among the few things that I could do decently and enjoyed. So I started studying communications, French and Spanish.
Knowing more than one language is such an amazing advantage in any career, and in my work, it’s been even more of a help. So if you’re good with languages and already speak Spanish, you’ll have even more opportunities.
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TRAVEL VIDEO: Cool Things to Do in Puebla, Mexico
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After College
After I graduated, I moved from Albany to New York City. I got a secretarial job in a publishing company and started gradually looking for other jobs that I might like better and that could help me to move up. I started doing freelance writing on the side and used that to steer my career towards travel.
But I followed my mother’s advice about one important thing: I never quit a job if I didn’t have another one to go to.
So, over the years, I worked in book publishing, medical publishing, a couple ad agencies and a small weekly newspaper in Manhattan. I really enjoyed the creativity in all those jobs, but none of them quite tapped into my full range of passions, mostly because none had to do with travel. So I always had my eyes open, and the freelance writing I did on the side helped me to move forward, too.
I still had my eyes on something full-time with the travel industry. So I kept looking. Back then, companies put want ads in newspapers, and I kept seeing ads for various editorial positions at a company in Secaucus, New Jersey, called Reed Travel Group.
I applied for an editorial job there, and I didn’t get it. A couple months later I saw another job listed there. So I applied for that one. And I didn’t get that job, either.
I applied a total of four different times before I finally got hired at Reed Travel Group! And I went on my first press trip assignment — it was a trip to Jamaica — just a couple months after starting, and I knew that company was the place for me. It was good that I never gave up and kept applying.
I worked as an editor and writer in three different divisions at that company over the course of nearly 9 years. I learned a lot and made great friends and contacts.
And then came 9/11. The travel industry took a huge hit in the months and years after 9/11, and so logically the travel publishing industry did, too. The company I worked for started a series of layoffs, and I lost my job in what I think was the fourth round.
But that actually ended up working out really well, because they weren’t laying me off because of my performance, it was just because the company was losing money. But they really still needed my services. So as I was signing my severance agreement with one hand, my other hand was signing my freelance contract, and I immediately began freelancing for the company as soon as I left. And I still work a lot with that company today, but as a freelancer, working from home and traveling as much as I can.
What’s It Really Like to be a Travel Writer?
I really do love my job. Being passionate about what you do makes any job better. But I do need to point out that there are positives and negatives to any job, so it’s just a matter of finding a career and a job where the positives outweigh the negatives.
In terms of my typical day, I try to mimic standard office hours as much as possible, since most of my contacts, clients and editors work normal business hours. That means I wake up early Monday through Friday, go to the gym (if it’s not shut down because of the pandemic) and then get down to work.
My daily work varies, depending on the specific assignments and projects I have. Some days I may spend almost the entire day writing or doing interviews. Other days I spend all my time just responding to emails or looking for new story ideas, making pitches or looking for new clients.
I travel about once a month, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. I cover Mexico every month for a magazine based in Los Angeles, so my most frequent destinations are all in Mexico — places like Cancun, Los Cabos, Mexico City, Guadalajara. But I sometimes visit other places, it could be in Central or South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia or Africa. As a travel writer, it’s a good idea to have an area of specialty, but it’s also good to keep your mind open and visit places outside of your usual region, too, when you can.
The pandemic has changed how I work. I flew back from a trip to Bogota, Colombia, on March 15, 2020, just when the world was starting to shut down. I stayed home for three months, AND THEN I finally started traveling again to Mexico in June of last year. And I’ve been traveling almost every month since, including one trip to the Dominican Republic and New Orleans.
But they aren’t the same kind of trips as before. I had to start writing about pandemic-era protocols, how hotels were trying to keep guests safe, and what people should know about whether it’s safe to travel during the pandemic. My goal has become to educate people so they can make their own decisions about when and where they should travel again.
Some Things Haven’t Changed
A big thing about being a freelancer — at least the kind of freelancer I am — is that you’re never really done with work. If I’m busy with deadlines, I’m busy with deadlines. But if I have no work due in the near future, then I’m freaking out that I won’t have enough revenue for the coming month and so I get super busy coming up with new ideas for editors and custom content clients.
So, One way or another, I’m always busy, and one way or another, I work every single day of the week, all year, even if it’s just for a few minutes on the weekends. I’m never not thinking about work. But I love my job, so it’s worth it.
If you’re asking me for my advice for anyone who’s interested in a similar career path, I’d say a few quick things, some of which really come from my mother, not me. #1. Always have a cash cushion to fall back on. #2 is to Always have some kind of health insurance. #3 is to always work toward your goals. Keep your ultimate dreams in mind.
Education — that includes grade school, high school and going to college — can help you to realize your dreams and really make things happen. Start with a realistic plan — after I graduated, I started writing travel articles for free for a tiny local newspaper, just to get clips (WHICH ARE WRITING SAMPLES), and then built myself up from there. Whatever you do, and whatever you WANT to do, follow your nature and follow your passion, because you need to really love doing something like this in order to be motivated to keep going.
And VERY IMPORTANT: don’t ever give up. Remember, I had to apply four times before I got my dream job!