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I believe in being uncomfortable. 

Being uncomfortable means that you have escaped the cushy everyday life that modern times have afforded those who want it. It means doing something out of the ordinary. It means not knowing a soul when you first get to college. It means travelling halfway across the world with 25 strangers. It means poison ivy all over your aching legs from a 14-mile hike. It means always looking back and feeling like you are a different person than you were before your experience, whatever it may be. 

This philosophy sprung from a belief in not saying “no” to anything when I was in college. This of course stopped at illegal activities (mostly), but extended to the rest of my life. Join a fraternity? Yep. Impromptu road trip to Charleston, SC? Absolutely. Hike part of the Appalachian Trail? For sure. Learn to sail? Blind date? Party on a Tuesday morning? Yes, yes, yes. What this eventually led me to was the realization that each time I tried something new and out of my comfort zone, whether I liked it or not, I grew as a person. I was more confident, met new people, had a great memory, or just had another skill that might be useful one day. Even when I got bad poison ivy all over from a hike, at least I had been outside doing something rather than wasting time on the Internet. 

One of the biggest commitments I made to being outside my comfort zone was my trip to Australia to study for a summer. I went with 25 people I had never met before we met at various airports or actually in Sydney. Over two months these people became some of my best friends. People I still keep in touch with despite not having seen them in years. I learned a lot about them and the country I was in, but despite how cliché it sounds, I learned more about myself. I became more confident and more open to others as well. I still look back at that experience as one of the defining moments of my life. 

I won’t say that this belief has made me a great people person, or immune to awkwardness around new people, or made me an expert camper, hiker, or anything else. I just started at a new school and 120 new people scared the crap out of me. But I do know that I am a better person today than I would have been had I never gone out of my comfort zone, and that’s a good enough reason for me to continue being uncomfortable.

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