In April of 2025, I told my family and friends that I had accepted a summer job in Medora,N.D.
This announcement took everyone in my life by surprise. I had never expressed any outward interest in North Dakota and the only reason I had found the job came from a random late night scrolling session on LinkedIn.
Their astonishment quickly turned to curiosity as I explained that I had been given a position at a store called Teddy’s Bears, Medora’s own version of a Build-a-Bear Workshop.
My friends were convinced I was falling for some sort of scam. They were certain that the promise of teddy bears had lured me out of the safe haven of my home and the next time they would see me would be on the upcoming season of Dateline.
What I had to explain to everyone, though, was that Medora was a very real town. It sits in the Badlands of North Dakota. It was founded in 1883, by the French Nobleman Marquis de Mores, who named the town after his wife.
That same year, a 24 year old Theodore Roosevelt visited the town on a hunting trip. He loved the Badlands so much, he impulsively bought two cattle ranches where he worked and lived over a period of years in order to experience an authentic American cowboy way of life.
Roosevelt found solace in North Dakota, especially after the death of his wife and mother on Valentine’s Day of 1884. He felt that the land helped to heal him after such a devastating loss. He even later credited his rise to the American presidency to the time he spent in North Dakota.
As the years passed, Medora became a ghost town. That is until the 1950’s when Harold Schaefer, owner of the Gold Seal Company, rediscovered the beauty of the seemingly insignificant town and invested copious amounts of time and money into rebuilding the community. This turned it into North Dakota’s number one tourist destination.
Today, the town boasts an outdoor musical revue complete with live horses on stage and fireworks, along with tributes to Roosevelt, Western culture and American history.
The town also sits right outside the Theodore Roosevelt National Park,the only National Park named after a single person, due to Roosevelt’s commitment to conservation efforts throughout his life.
Now, thousands of people spend their summer in Medora and hundreds of individuals get hired from all around the world to work throughout the town and support the height of the summer tourism.
Medora offers the perfect opportunity to college students to earn money over the summer while also giving them the chance to earn scholarships to fund their education. I was fortunate enough to be one of the recipients of the Tjaden Scholarship, which is one of several scholarships, collectively over $40,000, available each year to employees.
By finding new environments and engaging with cultures outside of your own, you get the chance to see the world while also identifying your place in it.
I met people from all around the world. I had a roommate from Honduras, a co-worker from the Dominican Republic and a manager from Canada. I made friends from Wisconsin and from Poland.
My summer was filled to the brim with exciting adventures, but a highlight for me was when I attended a show put on by Kurt Skinner, a Teddy Roosevelt reenactor.
Skinner told stories from the life of Roosevelt and quoted Roosevelt’s famous 1899 speech “The Strenuous Life.”
As I sat in the audience, mesmerised by his performance, he picked me out of the crowd and handed me an official Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider bear.
He recited these words from the iconic speech: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
Although I greatly treasure the teddy bear handed to me by Roosevelt himself, the best thing I received from my time in North Dakota was understanding the importance of trying.
I learned just how crucial it is to fail. Failure isn’t easy to deal with, but that’s exactly what makes it valuable. It’s a learning tool. It’s essential to the growth and betterment of people and of society as a whole.
Roosevelt lost multiple elections, dealt with insurmountable grief and fought through many health issues, but the reason he’s on Mt. Rushmore isn’t because he finally won the presidency; he’s on Mt. Rushmore because he took failure as an invitation to try again.
All of the people that show up to Medora to work over the summer, all have something in common with Roosevelt: a desire to try.
This summer I learned that the world is full of new people to meet and old places to see. By discovering what the world has to offer you, you’ll be able to discover what you have to offer the world.
The spirit of Teddy Roosevelt lives on in all of the hundreds of people every year who take the leap to spend a few months to walk the same path Roosevelt did. However, his spirit still lives on in anybody who is brave enough to take up a new challenge and just try.
Edited by Anson Appelhanz and Anushma Dahal
