“Come on, Alex, you can do this. You’re going to be okay!”
That’s what I kept telling myself when standing on the Kawarau Bridge’s edge in Queenstown, New Zealand, as I was about to step off the bungy platform. As someone who’s afraid of heights, this was just about the worst possible scenario I could have pictured myself in. How did I get here?! Why did I decide to do this? This is crazy!
There was a lot going through my head standing on that platform on April 3, 2023. From an outsider’s perspective, it probably looked like this girl who calls herself an adrenaline junkie thought it would be a cool thing to do and tell her friends about. But for me, there was a lot more behind the leap off that platform over the crystal-blue river on that sunny morning.
I believe it’s important for people to have a driver, a goal, maybe a life motto, or something that keeps them going and growing! For me, it’s an ideology of always getting out of your comfort zone and taking leaps of faith. The best things in life usually happen when you start out most afraid. I’m always trying to push myself to do things that make me uncomfortable or scare the heck out of me. In my experience, my favorite stories to tell now are the ones where I started out questioning what or why I was doing something—or if I could even do it at all, just like that day on the Kawarau Bridge.
It took a leap of faith to decide to go to school far away from my home state. It took a leap of faith to decide to go skydiving one random morning during my freshman year. It took a leap of faith to leave my school and my friends for a whole six months to travel to the other side of the world with a bunch of people I did not know. It took a leap of faith to get myself to stand on the edge of a bungy platform by myself to face my biggest fear head-on. If I could do all those other scary things, what was stopping me from doing this?
I can honestly say that the biggest leap, the literal leap, was the scariest of them all. But once I took it, just like all those other metaphorical leaps had proven to be, it was the most blissful experience of my life. The wind blowing in my face and the sun shining on me over that fresh, blue river was a feeling I will never forget. I had to remind myself that without all those other leaps, I wouldn’t have gotten to where I was that day, able to say I faced my biggest fear.
So, what does this story of a girl from the middle of Ohio bungy jumping in New Zealand mean? It’s up to you! But what I learned so quickly throughout experiences like this—and my entire time abroad in New Zealand and Australia—was that you’ll be faced with choices and experiences that will seem scary and daunting at first. But once you give yourself that push, take that leap of faith, and get out of your comfort zone, those are the most formative experiences!
Do you want to go abroad? Do it. Do you want to go skydiving? Do it. Do you want to pursue something different than the norm? Do it! You never know what exciting path these experiences will lead you down.
Alex Dashner, University of Tampa, studied abroad in Australia with TEAN.
