Michol Zahoran
October 5, 2005


Life is like a road trip. It begins at birth and continues through people’s lives until they reach their common destination, death. Along the way, people may stumble across problems or may be forced to take detours; however, in the end we all [everyone] finally reach[s] our [the] destination [you are talking about other people and then talking about "we". Neither one is wrong, but you need to pick one and make it consistent throughout your paper].

As soon as children are born, they begin their road trip through life. For about the first eighteen years of their lives, children have parents, teachers and other adult role models to guide them. These adults are, in essence, the children’s “map.” They guide the children in the right direction. When the children become adolescences, they may try to abandon the map and venture out onto the road on their own. Yet, after a few wrong turns and one too many bumps, most adolescents return to their map for guidance.

As the road trip continues, adolescents enter adulthood and find themselves at a fork in the road. At this juncture of the road trip, they are forced not to set the map aside, but to fold it up and store it the glove compartment [!!!]. At the stop sign in front of these two roads, the travelers must make an important decision. One road will lead them to college after high school graduation, and the other road will send them directly into the work force or perhaps the military. Both roads contain a blind bend where the travelers may want to pull off the road and stop until they learn whether they have been accepted to college or have been accepted at a job. Yet there is nowhere nor time to pull off. They must drive around the bend, unsure of what to expect.
Along this road trip, travelers may pick up many hitchhikers. Some of these hitchhikers may accompany them for a longer period of time than others. However,a bond will develop between the traveler and each hitchhiker. Sometimes this bond may last even after the hitchhiker and traveler have parted ways. Some travelers are fortunate enough to have one or more hitchhikers that decide to remain for the entire road trip and their final destination.

For the traveler who does not believe in a spiritual life after death, the final destination of this road trip is death itself. For those travelers who believe that after death the soul leaves the body and resides somewhere else eternally, the road trip may be never ending. If one’s existence is eternal, then so may be the road trip. Or they may believe that that place where they are to spend eternal life is their destination -- the road and the marvelous and perhaps bewildering journey ends there.

This road trip of life varies for every person. Some people have a long trip while others are very short. Sometimes, especially during adolescence, drivers are stuck at stoplights when they want to be moving forward. There are some points in this road trip when the drivers want to stop, pull off the road and take a break, but instead they are forced to continue. Every driver’s road trip is filled with many bumps, bends and wrong turns. There are days when drivers can travel a great distance and there are days where they may become caught in a traffic jam. Some days the drivers’ vehicle is full of people and other days they are all alone. There is nothing that can be done about these variations. It is just life.

[Wow. I mean ... wow. This is great. Other than a rough introduction, this is another stellar paper.]