Being Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable

Miriam Himes | Opinion Editor

One of the many privileges of being a college student today includes receiving roughly three months off during the summer to take a break from the our rigorous and chaotic schedules and invest our time in other interests.  

For some UNCW students, this means staying on the coast and soaking up rays and catching waves at Wrightsville beach. Others return home to part-time jobs and old friends while still others explore outside their immediate communities and take jobs and internships in other cities and states.  

While each category has their perks, beginning to gain outside experience in a particular career field is an exceptional way for students to boost their resume and evidence their dedication and diligence to their future employers.

But it’s so much more than that.  Internships and jobs give us the opportunity to explore our horizons and initiate our slow tip-toeing into the adult world.  Not only do we have the potential to gain invaluable insight and experience in our desired field, but we also can learn so much about life outside college and ultimately, the world.  My summer internship with a conservation corps this summer opened my eyes to a myriad of things about myself.

Working in a conservation corps is challenging. The conservation corps I worked with, ACE (American Conservation Experience), sent us out on 4 to 8 day long projects.  We rose at 5:45am and worked 10 hour days with few breaks in between long stretches of oftentimes methodical and tedious work.  

Sometimes, the humidity was so intense our long-sleeved cotton shirts and quick-dry pants stayed wet with sweat throughout the project. Other times, our hands would be too numb from using power tools to successfully unscrew our Nalgenes. It was an incredibly laborious job and our muscles ached from the swinging of pickaxes or the chiseling of rocks.

Yet, we persevered. We sweat through the grueling hot days, the stormy nights in our tents, and the repetitive consistency of our morning oatmeal and we endured the roughness of our work. At first, the work seemed so arduous that I longed for our lunch breaks and counted down the seconds till afternoon 15-minute rests. But after a few projects into ACE, I adapted.

I became used to the 5:45am alarm and the many camp chores and the stale salty snacks, and I became comfortable with this foreign idea of being okay with being uncomfortable, or even miserable.

I remember one specific day in which I was on a backcountry project – backpacking on the site of our project to rid that area of invasive species – and I looked at my watch. It was only 9am and I had been working since 7am.

I had already counted at least 30 trees which I had treated with the hack-and-squirt method (whacking their trunks with a hatchet and spraying the cambium with an herbicide) and my clothes were four days dirtied with sweat, mud, and leaf litter. They started sticking to my skin.

I was alone in an area of the mountains on the side of steep incline, trying to reach around a trunk without stepping into a yellow jacket’s nest nearby, when I realized I was okay. That, despite the exhaustion I was feeling and the perpetual growling in my stomach for lunch, I was fine with it.  

This was an oddly and unexpectedly empowering moment. Here, the middle of Weed Patch Mountain, I was filled with the sudden idea that I could do anything. That, if I could push through this many days of discomfort and monotonous work and filth and exhaustion, I could pursue any of my life goals with this newfound vivacious audacity.

It was transformative and it gave me a fresh and different confidence and boldness that I find transcend my time with ACE and stay with me as I tackle new challenges and obstacles this coming semester.

So, I encourage you: be okay with being uncomfortable. Embrace awkward situations and miserable days. They have this incredible power to impact you and give you insight on who you are and of what you are capable.  

While I learned about the power of discomfort during my summer internship, we have the potential to take advantage of the struggles and pain life throws at us in plethora of ways.  

So don’t limit yourself.  Open yourself to up new opportunities, ambitions, and challenges. Let yourself explore foreign territories by joining new clubs, volunteering with a group with whom you haven’t worked, or starting curious conversations with new people. Embrace the discomfort of life and you might find yourself changed.