whysohoude
Feb 11, 2014
Undergraduate / Queen's PSE: Describe a challenging experience and what you have learned from it. [3]
I feel that challenges in life are a direct cause of leaving ones comfort zone. In high school we face the challenges of getting good grades and staying social all while being a hormonal teenager. These challenges are what cement us as students, efficient and ambitious, however they show little insight into how we deal with what's outside our comfort zone.
For me, true challenge came when I took a summer job that whisked me away from my neatly divided binders and mechanical pencils, and put me in the working man's world. During the summer of 2013, I worked in construction, siding condos. Everything about the job challenged me; I have a dust allergy, bad eczema on my hands and am prone to heatstroke. As you can imagine, it was a struggle at first. I would come home angry and dehydrated, coughing up black mucus all while my hands cracked and bled. After two weeks in I was ready to quit and go back to my clean, air conditioned, grocery store job. What stopped me was the realization that if I became a quitter then I would no longer and never again be a doer. The doer in me refused to quit. My hands grew calluses and my lungs adapted, my angst became focus and my comfort level changed. I learned that in order to succeed at anything, you must be willing to leave what you know and fight through the turbulence of change. This is what I did in the summer of 2013 and now I no longer fear what is outside my comfort zone.
I feel that challenges in life are a direct cause of leaving ones comfort zone. In high school we face the challenges of getting good grades and staying social all while being a hormonal teenager. These challenges are what cement us as students, efficient and ambitious, however they show little insight into how we deal with what's outside our comfort zone.
For me, true challenge came when I took a summer job that whisked me away from my neatly divided binders and mechanical pencils, and put me in the working man's world. During the summer of 2013, I worked in construction, siding condos. Everything about the job challenged me; I have a dust allergy, bad eczema on my hands and am prone to heatstroke. As you can imagine, it was a struggle at first. I would come home angry and dehydrated, coughing up black mucus all while my hands cracked and bled. After two weeks in I was ready to quit and go back to my clean, air conditioned, grocery store job. What stopped me was the realization that if I became a quitter then I would no longer and never again be a doer. The doer in me refused to quit. My hands grew calluses and my lungs adapted, my angst became focus and my comfort level changed. I learned that in order to succeed at anything, you must be willing to leave what you know and fight through the turbulence of change. This is what I did in the summer of 2013 and now I no longer fear what is outside my comfort zone.
