Undergraduate / 'Three days in the wilderness' - leaving comfort zone prompt [6]

Write about an experience in which you left your comfort zone. How did this experience change you?

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Three days in the wilderness without family, technology or running water. Not only was this field trip my first time away from my family, but I was without friends, technology, or any form of electricity. Students from each 7th grade science class were selected to represent the school on a trip to Port Isobel, a 230 acre island located in the Chesapeake Bay, in the hopes of cleaning the Bay and learning about the environment. As a part of Generation Y, the generation to grow up with technological luxuries such as the Internet, I couldn't imagine trading a nice air conditioned house for a cabin in the middle of nowhere, yet reluctantly accepted the invitation.

On the first day, we visited Tangier Island just west of our destination. The island had a mere population of 700 inhabitants, a population small than that of my middle school. Stray cats were just as common on the island as computers were in our hometown. Living without phones, cars, or television was normal to the people of Tangier Island. They chose to focus on church and family rather than tangible pleasures. Coming onto the island we viewed these people as poor individuals who needed our help, yet once we spent time with the people we quickly saw that they lived without shame and were proud of their simplistic lifestyle. We were the ones who had needed their help to see there were more important things in the world than technology.

By the second day I had made new friends who distracted me from becoming homesick, I had taken nature walks through the marshland to replace technology, and I had learned to catch and cook my own food without using an electric stove. I no longer missed my comfort zone and was willing to embrace new ideas from outside my comfort zone.

Before departure on the third day, we visited a certain part of the Bay which was completely littered with trash; we immediately began cleaning up. Towards the end of the cleanup process, I ran across a fish caught in a bottle that couldn't swim out. After pouring the fish and the water out of the bottle, I noticed the bottle was not only recyclable, but it had a Pennsylvania label on it. Rivers from six states, some of which do not even border the Chesapeake Bay, run into the Bay. The decision a person in Pennsylvania to not recycle nearly took the life of this fish.

In just three days I had gained a new outlook on life, all because I chose to leave everything I knew to be the normal way of living. The world is heavily interconnected; people can affect the lives of others for the better or worse without even realizing it. I care more for not only the people directly around me, but for people elsewhere in the world through thinking through the effects of my actions before committing them, and through recognizing my place in the world to help improve it for future generations.