What can you say you did once you kick the bucket? Can you look back and say you lived a full life? So maybe you didn’t go bungee jumping off Bloukrans Bridge in South Africa, the world’s highest bungee bridge, but how about simply dancing in the rain, watching a movie at a drive-in theater or kissing under mistletoe? Someone once said, “Life isn’t about the number of breaths you take, it’s the moments that take your breath away.
That’s the beauty of bucket lists – you can make those moments happen.
PK Creedon and Samantha Rosenbaum, both students at the University of Tampa, realized how precious and short life really was when they both lost close friends. From then on, PK and Sam decided not to put their dreams on hold, so they made bucket lists to put their dreams in motion.
These are their stories.
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After the death of his best friend Nicole in October 2009, PK made a life-changing decision. PK, a junior international business and marketing major, challenged himself to truly live for him and for his deceased best friend. In order to do so, he made a bucket list in spring 2010.
“I’d like to think she’s living through me,” said PK, “and I’m showing her one hell of a time.” PK, an impulsive and adventurous kind of guy, has already crossed off numerous experiences from his bucket list, such as cliff diving, skydiving, swimming with dolphins, white water rafting, snorkeling and taking a flight to a random destination. He’s also enjoyed getting lost somewhere, specifically Rome. “We decided it would be more fun to get lost,” said PK, “and see the city that way as opposed to getting a map!” Other experiences are going to an MMA fight and attending a Lady Gaga concert and Lollapalooza.
When it comes to his bucket list though, he never knows what’s coming next.
“I love when things go wrong and honestly try to make the most out of every experience,” said PK. “My friend Nicole wouldn’t expect anything less.”
At the moment, PK’s favorite experience has been backpacking across Europe where he started by studying abroad for four months in England, two months in Ireland and one month in Germany.
“While in London, I met someone at a flat party and we both wanted to travel,” said PK. “The next day this new friend of mine and I booked a one way flight to Greece and from there made it to Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and a few other stops before returning to London.”
However, random and spontaneous adventures like backpacking across Europe aren’t the only experiences on his bucket list. Some aren’t as extreme and have actually occurred over a longer period of time like: meeting someone from all 50 states, learning how to speak German, choreographing and performing a flash mob and turning a stranger into a friend. Fortunately, PK has no expiration on his bucket list. “Having said that, the sooner the better,” said PK. “Some things take time, and I’m just trying to make the most out of mine.”
With that in mind, PK looks forward to crossing one thing off his list. “I hope I’ll be able to someday cross off the ‘get married’ line on my list. Fingers crossed,” said PK.
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During her freshman year at the University of Tampa, Sam, a senior advertising and public relations major, had a very close friend named Liz Kelly pass away from a rare form of cancer. “It opened my eyes to the reality that life is precious and you never know how much time you have left,” said Sam.
So began her bucket list. “She never got the chance to experience many of her dreams so I decided to start accomplishing mine,” said Sam. “I promised myself that I wouldn’t put off my dreams and I used creating a bucket list as a tangible way to help me keep track of the things I wanted to experience.”
And Sam has kept her promise.
She has already crossed off shark cage diving, put a large amount of money on one roll of roulette, explore the Great Wall of China, visit Nelson Mandela’s jail cell and live on a boat for at least a month, to name a few. One item that Sam completed was giving away a material possession that she liked but didn’t need and for her, that possession was her favorite pair of sunglasses that she often wore when traveling. “On a visit to a school in Ghana one of the kids began messing around with my glasses and was smiling, laughing and joking as she put them on,” said Sam. “She told me one day she wished she could have a pair just like it. I told her she could keep them as a gift.”
Like PK, Sam doesn’t have a deadline for her bucket list and never knows what she might cross of next. Some things on her list are easier to cross of than others like “reading a certain book or spending a day in silence.” When it comes to the more extreme adventures, those require more time and money, such as bungee jumping in South Africa. “I am really looking forward to crossing off bungee jumping from Bloukrans Bridge in South Africa,” said Sam.
Until then, Sam has used her time to cross off more items from her bucket list, such as leaving a waiter a really big tip, skydiving, crossing the equator, attending the 2012 Olympics in London with her friend Stevie, getting her bartending license, running every day for a month, voting, doing something kind to a total stranger, going to Mardi Gras, shutting off her cell phone for a week and hopping on a random bus in Vietnam without knowing where it was going. What was supposed to be a spontaneous day trip with a friend turned into an overnight stay in Tay Ninh, a town in southwest Vietnam famous for the Cao Dai Temple where the religion Caodaism was founded in the 1920s. Sam had completely forgotten about a scheduled Skype interview that she had with her now current job in OSLE and had to find an Internet café, but couldn’t communicate with any of the Vietnamese people. After finding a local family to drive them around town on motorcycles to find the Internet café, she and her friend found out that the buses stopped running. “We were stranded in Tay Ninh with nowhere to stay,” said Sam. “No hotels would allow us to sleep the night because we did not have our passports on us. We finally had to bribe a hotel owner to let us stay until 5:00 a.m. when the first bus came.”
With adventures like these, Sam finds that her bucket list is always changing and expanding. “I try to keep a balance of things that will take a long time and thinks I can wake up and do any day,” said Sam. Most importantly though, her bucket list is on her wall in her bedroom where she can see it every day. “That way my goals are always in my mind,” said Sam, “and I don’t lose sight of all the things I am trying to get out of life.”