{"id":2203,"date":"2014-02-17T17:19:09","date_gmt":"2014-02-17T22:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/?p=2203"},"modified":"2025-12-09T14:02:58","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T19:02:58","slug":"a-good-time-for-a-road-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2014\/02\/17\/a-good-time-for-a-road-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"A Good Time for a Road Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Paige — Teachers always say they\u2019ll go to the ends of the earth for their students. Oscar Santos did just that for one of his.<\/p>\n

Santos, a 10th<\/sup>-grade geometry teacher, volunteered to drive Jonathan Alcala the roughly 1,200 miles from Pharr, Texas, to the Wabash campus to make sure that Alcala could attend today\u2019s Top 10 Visit Day.<\/p>\n

Alcala wasn\u2019t sure he\u2019d be able to make the trip due to some issues with his visa, but those cleared up Friday afternoon, a little too late to purchase a plane ticket, so Santos stepped up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was kind of a last minute thing,\u201d said Santos. \u201cHe found out Friday afternoon that he could make it, so he needed someone to drive him. I said \u2018sure, I\u2019ll do it.\u2019 I knew it was important to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"a<\/a>
Oscar Santos covered 1,200 miles in 22 hours to deliver a student to Top 10 Visit Day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Santos, a first-year teacher and former social worker, is the coach of the math club of which Alcala is a member, and he freely admits that he didn\u2019t know Alcala all that well. That changed dramatically over the previous 22 hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got to know him really well on this trip,\u201d Santos laughed. \u201cHe\u2019s a great kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

They pulled out of the Rio Grande Valley at 9:30 p.m. CST and arrived in Crawfordsville just after 8 p.m. Sunday. Aside from the two speeding tickets he received in Texas \u2013 \u201cI was worried about getting him here on time,\u201d he said \u2013 there were a number of stops including a few cat naps along the way.<\/p>\n

It was the first trip to Indiana for both driver and passenger.<\/p>\n

All in all, it\u2019s been a memorable experience.\u00a0 \u201cI never imagined I\u2019d have that kind of road trip where you do the whole trip in one day,\u201d Santos explained. I didn\u2019t think I could do it, but it was a good experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like any high school senior making his college choice, Alcala had his own share of questions and reservations during the trip north. Santos did his best to allay those fears.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in a very small town in the Rio Grande Valley,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s a different culture. I warned him about some of the things he might see and emphasized not to get frightened by the snow or the cultural differences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know quite how he feels about campus and things because I haven\u2019t talked to him yet,\u201d Santos said after the alumni panels, \u201cbut I loved the presentations this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Paige — Teachers always say they\u2019ll go to the ends of the earth for their students. Oscar Santos did just that for one of his. Santos, a 10th-grade geometry teacher, volunteered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2014\/02\/Santos_6944.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3767,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions\/3767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}