Breaking out of Your Comfort Zone through Study Abroad
By Meg O’Connell, Business major
ISA Chile: Valparaiso Business and Culture in English & Spanish Language
American University in Cairo
There is this idea of a comfort zone, where your identity feels free to be entirely itself, unaltered by the outside environment. It’s safe and enticing. I, however, have never learned very much living in my comfort zone.
I live for the unknown.
As a junior at CU Boulder, I have the amazing opportunity to study abroad for the entire year. I wanted to work on my Spanish, but I also wanted to push myself to be uncomfortable. I went to the study abroad office to find out where in the world I would go.
You can learn about the Catholic Church from the history books, pass judgement on the beliefs of others from a distance. But then you sit at a table in Ireland, after biking more than you thought possible, with the strongest old women you’ve met, feeding you delicious clam chowder while telling you about the love she has for all of her own children—that is when you learn about the Catholic religion.
Or when your mother scolds you for spilling your water on the ground, only to have a Peruvian Porter dry your eyes by showing you that in his village, before every meal or any sip of water, you give a little to Earth first, to show how grateful you are for everything you take from it every day. That is where you become aware of the space you occupy, and how very lucky you are to simply exist in it.
Every culture I have encountered, every person I have met, every place I have been, and every crazy thing I have eaten, has taught me just a little bit more about how our world works. We cannot deny the problems that plague our communities, but we cannot even hope to find change before we understand where these problems are coming from. So often it can be blamed on the differences between us.
We have ahead of us an expanding global community, a wonderful opportunity to grow and learn together. But in order to achieve this, we need to learn more about each other.
After all, what good is life if I don’t learn something new every day my feet hit the ground?
By Meg O’Connell, Business major
ISA Chile: Valparaiso Business and Culture in English & Spanish Language
American University in Cairo
There is this idea of a comfort zone, where your identity feels free to be entirely itself, unaltered by the outside environment. It’s safe and enticing. I, however, have never learned very much living in my comfort zone.
I live for the unknown.
As a junior at CU Boulder, I have the amazing opportunity to study abroad for the entire year. I wanted to work on my Spanish, but I also wanted to push myself to be uncomfortable. I went to the study abroad office to find out where in the world I would go.
If you look up pictures of Valparaiso, Chile, you’ll see why that was an easy choice. I am currently there now, falling more and more in love with this place every day. The street art is mesmerizing and I love getting to practice another language. I just got back from five days of driving around the driest desert on Earth in a van painted like Marilyn Monroe.
The second semester was almost as easy of a decision. I couldn’t tell you what about Cairo, Egypt caught my eye, but I had to go there. I know I need to learn more about the world, and something about Cairo seems right. Cairo will stretch my mind more than I can imagine. I have learned about Islam, but only the very basics. I have learned parts of the history and have been awestruck by the silence and beauty of a mosque in Uganda, but still, I know nothing compared to what I could.
I was beyond lucky to be born in the United States, even luckier to be tucked away in my small snow globe of a ski town where the snow falls on Christmas and every tree is
The second semester was almost as easy of a decision. I couldn’t tell you what about Cairo, Egypt caught my eye, but I had to go there. I know I need to learn more about the world, and something about Cairo seems right. Cairo will stretch my mind more than I can imagine. I have learned about Islam, but only the very basics. I have learned parts of the history and have been awestruck by the silence and beauty of a mosque in Uganda, but still, I know nothing compared to what I could.
I was beyond lucky to be born in the United States, even luckier to be tucked away in my small snow globe of a ski town where the snow falls on Christmas and every tree is
decorated year round. My vision of the world could have stopped where the mountains turn to plateaus and people no longer use the word “steezy”. Once again, however, I was
lucky. I have ridden my bike across Ireland, and to countless gelato shops in Tuscany. I raced my siblings across the Incan Trail in Peru, and across the Cinque Terra, doubled my weight from a summer in Sicily, ate countless rocks in my beans in Uganda, and now I am enamored with the entire country of Chile.
You can learn about the Catholic Church from the history books, pass judgement on the beliefs of others from a distance. But then you sit at a table in Ireland, after biking more than you thought possible, with the strongest old women you’ve met, feeding you delicious clam chowder while telling you about the love she has for all of her own children—that is when you learn about the Catholic religion.
Or when your mother scolds you for spilling your water on the ground, only to have a Peruvian Porter dry your eyes by showing you that in his village, before every meal or any sip of water, you give a little to Earth first, to show how grateful you are for everything you take from it every day. That is where you become aware of the space you occupy, and how very lucky you are to simply exist in it.
Every culture I have encountered, every person I have met, every place I have been, and every crazy thing I have eaten, has taught me just a little bit more about how our world works. We cannot deny the problems that plague our communities, but we cannot even hope to find change before we understand where these problems are coming from. So often it can be blamed on the differences between us.
We have ahead of us an expanding global community, a wonderful opportunity to grow and learn together. But in order to achieve this, we need to learn more about each other.
After all, what good is life if I don’t learn something new every day my feet hit the ground?
Last Updated December 2016