Camp has always been a place that pushes me out of my comfort zone. You won’t find many people who hate cheesy icebreaker games more than me. Doing silly things with strangers is not something I usually enjoy. Team building games at student council camp were more enjoyable for me, but they were incredibly frustrating to do with people I didn’t know. I am a creature of habit and don’t really like new things. However, camp definitely taught me that stepping out of my comfort zone is when I grew.

Icebreakers and team building gave me a lot of skills I didn’t know I would need. Now, as a reporting student, I am a lot better at striking up conversations and figuring out how to conduct interviews with different types of people. I have a much better approach to problem solving and leading committees within my sorority. I also learned how to speak up and not be the quiet girl waiting for the game to get back around to me. There are a lot of ways I apply these uncomfortable experiences in life. I cherish the fact that camp made me step outside of my comfort zone.

It’s always good to try new things, even if it’s uncomfortable. I still hate doing it, but I grow when I try new things.

I decided to try my hand at dip calligraphy pens since I love using regular pens to do hand lettering. Now, this hasn’t been a huge growing experience like camp, but it’s still trying something new. I thought I would be able to pick it up and make some really beautiful things. I was very wrong.

I learned a lesson in patience today. Trying to figure out how to work the different nibs (the part you dip in the ink) properly was frustrating. And I definitely didn’t figure it out in one day. You can see that from the photos.

The point is, I did something with a different approach than I usually do. It was a reminder that I’m not going to succeed at everything right away. Beautiful things take patience. Even though it was small, stepping out of my comfort zone still taught me something.

I still hate trying new things. This was frustrating. My advice is to do it anyway. The rewards outweigh the fear of failure.

I think failure was the real reason I always hated the games at student council camp. Beautiful friendships came out of that camp though because I pushed that fear of failure down and stepped out of my comfort zone.