How much do you walk on a normal day?

If you’re an average American, the answer is two miles, or 3,000 to 4,000 steps. But if you’re Benjamin “Benny” Signer ‘24, you go a few times beyond that once a week. 

Signer, who has lived in Los Angeles his entire life, spends his free time “watching movies, solving logic puzzles, and golfing.” Recently, however, he’s taken up a new hobby: long-distance walking. “I’ve always had a range of interests and a fascination with data and maps,” said Signer, “and I was looking at the map of [Los Angeles] and I noticed Ventura… I thought, ‘I’m leaving for college soon, I’m not going to be staying in L.A., might be a fun project to try to walk all of Ventura.” 

This project isn’t going to be easy. Ventura Boulevard is 18 miles long. At the average walking speed for most adults, it would take six hours to walk it all in one go, which is Signer’s goal. Making things more difficult, his walk is being attempted in Los Angeles, where temperatures can get into the triple digits in the summer, which is when Signer started working towards his goal.

These factors haven’t stopped Signer so far. “Right now, I’m in the 11- to 13-mile range,” he said. “What I really have to do is push myself.” The twelfth grader has been building up his stamina, with his walks starting out at four miles and going up from there. He’s walked to places as close as Encino and as far as Calabasas, which is roughly thirteen miles away from Signer’s Sherman Oaks home. Signer willed himself to accomplish this by changing his perspective and setting clear and attainable goals.

Although Signer has made a lot of progress, it can still be hard to find that extra motivation. Even after you walk 11 miles down Ventura, there are still seven miles left. Signer says that he thinks “finding fun in it is an important part” of why he has been able to work at this goal. Signer said that while a negative mentality can lead to dissatisfaction with your accomplishment, coming at it from a positive angle such as “If I do this walk, I’ll get to see all these cool places,” in his case, will make it more rewarding. Signer’s optimistic outlook has paid off, saying that he “never realized until he started doing these walks just how extensive it is, and the different cultures and different neighborhoods all along the same street, it’s a special place in L.A, in that it’s the street that takes you through a lot of neighborhoods that are so different yet so similar in so many ways.”

The lessons Signer has learned from undertaking this don’t just apply to physical challenges. Signer sets concrete goals for himself “because starting off three, four miles, I know there’s a lot of work to be done. And I know that with each new week I can make a little more progress working towards that goal.” When you’re faced with a mountain of homework, you can feel as if it is impossible to even make a dent. But setting a goal for yourself can help you feel as if you’re making progress. Instead of having a vague goal like “I want to finish my homework,” you can create plans for yourself like “I will do my math homework, and then English, and then science.” Doing this takes you from climbing a seemingly-insurmountable mountain to one where you know how much time it will take, and can track your progress. 

Although Signer says that he “can’t imagine that it will take [him] more than a month or two” to complete the walk, his spirit has not subsided. He intends to continue walking, because “in a time where we’re always interacting… that being able to just take a few hours on the weekend to clear [my] head with a walk, go to a new destination in LA, an area you might not always be, it’s therapeutic for me.” Despite originally thinking that he needed to take “earbuds with [him] in case [he] got bored” and having to “spend a day recovering, hobbling, around the house” after a walk, the benefits quickly became apparent and the project grew beyond the goal. 

Even though work like filling out college applications can seem daunting, pushing yourself to do so will normalize it for you and it will no longer become a burden, especially when, like Signer, who tries to walk “at least once a week,” you get into a rhythm. The same creed can apply to studying for tests, picking up a new hobby or skill, or learning to drive. As Signer says, “As long as you set goals for yourself and have dedication and follow through, you can go anywhere, you can do anything you put your mind through, as long as you have the drive.”