COLUMN: Saying goodbye to USU
It was a bittersweet moment to realize this is my last column at USU. Four years ago, I stepped onto this campus as a wide-eyed freshman with little sense of what college would be like. I figured some fun adventures with friends would be involved; I knew a bunch of neat classes would fit somewhere in the mix; I’d heard spending a lot of time in the library was rather vogue: Seniors could list the library as their permanent address.
The four years that followed that first day haven’t disappointed one bit. My favorite memories at USU range from going hoarse at Aggie basketball games to spending hours chatting animatedly with professors who have become exceptional mentors and friends. There have been plenty of highs and lows – the reigning low point is probably the 1 a.m. sobbing meltdown that occurred during finals week ’13 when the vending machine in the LLC erroneously produced a Sprite instead of the caffeinated nectar of life that is Diet Coke. Yikes.
But as I’ve reflected back on my aggregated college experience, I’ve noticed one particularly consistent theme through it all: The best things happened when I stepped out of my comfort zone. Whether it was taking a tough upper-division political science class as a freshman or getting involved in a club in which I didn’t know anyone, the times when I was pushed the furthest from my center of comfort were the times I grew the most and saw the greatest returns.
Whether you’re returning to USU in the fall or graduating in May and moving on to the next adventure, take on just one last homework assignment this semester: Pick a project for this summer that will make you expand the frontiers of your comfort zone. We’re going to call this your Zone Amplification Project, or ZAP, mostly because I’m so delighted with that fabulous acronym.
Here are the rules: Your ZAP can be something spectacular or something seemingly small, but it must be something that significantly pushes you out of your comfort zone in a field in which you want to see yourself grow. You might undertake a simple ZAP to expand your academic engagement by getting involved in an undergraduate research project, joining a club within your major, or mustering the courage to go visit your scariest professor during his or her office hours. Your ZAP might be something on a bigger scale, like taking an internship across or outside of the country, switching your major from something secure and bland to something you really love, or taking a leap of faith and deciding to go to graduate school.
The one qualifier: Your ZAP shouldn’t be something that will necessitate a conversation with an ecclesiastical leader or cause an awkward encounter with the authorities – hearing “Ten-four, we got ’em” growled into a police radio is not a nice thing to hear. We’re expanding our comfort zone here, not contracting our intelligence back to junior-high levels of common sense.
As you expand the horizons of your comfort zone through your ZAP, you’ll be surprised by what you learn about the world and about yourself. Who you are, and who you become, are choices that lie within your own purview. Isn’t that neat? There’s no better time and place to undertake the process of expanding your comfort zone and becoming the person you want to be than right here and right now – as a proud Utah State Aggie.
– The scintillating nuggets of wisdom in this column and its predecessors are credited to Ms. Katie Chapman, a dear friend and brilliant accomplice. Reach Briana with questions or comments at b.bowen@aggiemail.usu.edu.