Getting Comfortable With Discomfort

As the twilight of summer gives way to the crisp dawning of the fall I find that now is as good a time as any to reflect on the month of August and this summer as a whole. The best way to describe the past few weeks of August would be to equate it to finals season during a regular semester with the added pressure of applying to Law School and graduate programs, and a dash of anxiety about having to potentially take the GRE and you have the past few weeks. This colorfully stressful situation makes for an interesting mixed bag of emotions though having more or less successfully ran the gauntlet of work, research, school application packets, and only having 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds in a day, give or take, I am looking forward to some true, and much-needed relaxation.

This summer absolutely moved me outside of my comfort zone and pushed me to adapt and change in a way that I feel has not only made me a better undergraduate student but has also prepared me for future work in graduate school. I cannot help but feel fortunate for opportunities that push me outside of my comfort zone as I am a very strong believer in the idea that one of the worst things that can happen to you is getting too comfortable with your current situation. I think this can too easily lead to stimied aspirations and generally being acquiescent to complacency, whereas if you are to consistently push yourself outside of your comfort zone you will experience much more growth than if you had not. For me, this mindset not only applies to this summer but to the experience of attending college as a whole. Four years ago I couldn’t imagine attending college, I was afraid I wasn’t nearly smart enough, that there would be nothing of interest to me and that the pace and scope of the coursework would be far too much for my concussion-addled brain. I had grown comfortable with the idea that the only thing I would ever be good at was serving in the military. The natural response to this comfortable idea then was to throw myself into the most uncomfortable situation I could imagine--college. This was an endeavor I was wholly unprepared for, yet if I could make it work then I could potentially open the door to countless opportunities that my family, friends, and most certainly myself would have never dreamed of being possibilities.