Destination Unknown uses dialogue to explore the impact of General Education on the complicated, winding careers of real people.

Ink Factory live drawing representing the Destination Unknown program

What is Destination Unknown?

Our interview partners are professionals from a wide array of disciplines, some proceeding on straight career paths, others assembling their own career mosaics. As they describe taking on leadership roles, starting their own companies, braving intimidating changes in their profession (including the prospect of joblessness), or simply making great leaps in the name of their own happiness, they reflect on guidance found in likely and unlikely places and the resources that continue to help them with that look in the mirror during challenging transitions. Thinking back to their 18-year-old selves, our interviewees retrace the long threads of experience and competence, trial and knowledge, that connect their current professional lives to that moment when a young, often insecure, version of themselves first set foot on campus.

So, how can a first-year GenEd engineering course continue to help an editor see connections in her writers’ subjects? Technical theater open up a whole new professional path for a doubtful engineer? A psychology course transform an aspiring medical doctor into a counselor with a thriving career (while disappointing his parents)? And studying another language build the home you never knew you needed?

Destination Unknown does not seek definitive answers to these questions. Neither does it offer career advice or confidently distill the evolving labor market into marketable skillsets. Rather, it relies on dialogue and storytelling to identify the many ways a broad-based education has mattered in real people’s professional and personal lives. How do college graduates, 5, 10, 15+ years after graduation, view their General Education courses? What has proven important? What has come as a surprise? And are there any regrets?

We find our interlocutors’ thoughts to be as deeply insightful as they are wondrously unpredictable. Our hope is, you do, too.

The graphic above represents visual notes created in real-time during the first Destination Unknown panel in fall of 2020 by ink factory artist Emma Wimberley.

Destination Unknown is generously supported by a Penn State Office for General Education 2020-2024 Innovation Grant.