Keeping track! Student documents travel experiences

     From YouTube videos documenting Jackie Bultman’s best life experiences to artistic journals that delve deeper into her adventures, the junior found her way to “remember all the little things.” 

     From a young age, Bultman has been making YouTube videos that capture the way she sees the world, but they evolved into a travel journal where, “the whole story could be told.”

     Whenever she “spends an entire day in one place,” in which it was a trip “worth-while remembering,” Bultman creates a page in her journal that showcases the experience. On these trips she must have “tried something new or had a learning experience,” for it to be documented. 

     In the front of the journal is a list of “guidelines,” not rules because she stated, “life is made up of too many rules already.” These guidelines were made to replicate a pact formed between the main characters of the book “All the Bright Places,” that made them “do all these things in Indiana to make memories.” One of her guidelines is to, “leave something behind at each place.” 

     A rule Bultman does have is she has “to fill up the journal of Volume 1 and when […] [she] is done, start Volume 2.” She is “so excited to put in all of the trips from 2020 and 2021 because […] [she] is a year behind!” 

      A trip that fit the guidelines was Bultman’s trip to Canada. “In three days […] [Bultman] went to Montreal and Quebec.” She described Canada as “such a different atmosphere and it felt like France.” She confessed, “it was stressful not being able to speak their language, but it was a new experience and  […] [she] was excited to be immersed into the culture.” 

     When Bultman needs inspiration for a page she looks to, “Pinterest and […][her] sister Lexie.” On Pinterest, Bultman, “will start with looking for a color scheme.” Her sister Lexie, who Bultman claims, “has the most creative mind, always comes up with the most random things and they always look amazing.”

     Finding supplies for making the pages creative is not difficult due to one of Bultman’s phases as a kid. When she was, “younger […] [she] used to be obsessed with scrapbooking.” She recalls “sitting in the aisle of Joanne’s just gushing over all the stickers and paper.” 

     But she “grew out of that stage quickly, […] [leaving her] with all these materials; lots of stickers, pretty paper, and string.” Bultman not only uses the piles of materials in her pages, but she puts “souvenirs and maps from the places in the journal.” 

     Having a travel journal taught Bultman she, “need[s] to write things down to remember and that writing the smallest things down helps you learn to appreciate them.”