Nobody likes change-well, except for maybe the Obama supporters out there. I have known nurses who are really burnt out on a current job, stay with the job they dislike, because they would rather be miserable in an area that they know, rather than roll the dice and try something a little different.
My initial experience in getting out of my comfort zone was doing my junior year abroad, when I left life at Wartburg College-and that included my girlfriend- to study in Montpellier, France. It’s been almost exactly 27 years since I found myself alone on the train platform in Montpellier. This was in the days before the internet, before facebook…I remember walking out of the train station and my suitcase handle ripped apart from the rest of the suitcase, leaving me to cradle the suitcase, while looking for a hotel to spend the first couple of nights.
Most other American colleges and universities who had programs in Montpellier had a liaision who would help these kids find housing and to get enrolled at “Le Fac”. I had paperwork with addresses of the university in Montpellier, and that was about it. It would be up to me to find housing, get enrolled, open up a bank account (this was 1981-there were NO ATM’s at that time) and to generally learn the ropes from the last week of September to early July, when I was due to go back home to Minnesota.
When you are a foreigner arriving in a country alone, I cannot even begin to tell you what a lonely, depressing feeling it is. I had been in Montpellier for about 4 days, and I was at La Place de la Comedie one day, when I heard voices call out: “Steve!”. It was my Wartburg classmates Frank and Kathy (the 4th member of our group, Kurt, we would see a couple of days later). At least now I was not all alone.
I still needed to find an apartment. I ended up moving into a ramshackle, furnished apartment at 5 Allee des Arts-even after 27 years, the dingy room with only a cold water shower available in the courtyard of the complex is still burned into my memory. Taking cold showers in the mornings when it was starting to get into the low 40’s and hi 30’s outside in the late part of October were a rude awakening, to say the least. After a month, it was apparent that this was not going to be a suitable way to live once it got into late November and December.
As luck would have it, Frank found a very nice flat that was about a 15 minute walk from l’Universite` Paul Valery. He wanted to save some francs, and asked if I would be his roomate. I jumped at the chance. It had a small bathtub that you had to half-crouch in, but at least the water was warm, and the modern apartment was bright and open-a far cry from the third world shack that was my home for my first month in Montpellier.
One problem of being a foriegner in a foriegn land, is that you tend to gather with people who are just like you. I can tell you that it is a universal thing. It’s not just immigrants in the US, like Mexicans and Somalis who hang together. I found in Montpellier, that the Americans and other Anglephones, like the British tended to stay together as well. I wanted to meet other people who were NOT American. I found a small, evangalical church in Montpellier called Le Centre Biblique. It was to be a place where I met people from all over the world, and was introduced to friends, who introduced me to their friends. Once school started, I made friends in class. I enrolled at a gym to be able to lift weights, and through that I was able to make friends as well.
Over time, my French, which was already pretty good, got even better. My confidence improved to where I could more than hold my own in meeting people. I made French friends like Bernard Masse, and through him, his friend Jean-Paul Sirat. Through my involvement with the church, I met a British friend named Jonathan Rees. Through Jonathan, I met the Gaertner Family. Through the Gym, I met Eric Brousset, who was to become a very good friend during my time in Montpellier. Eric came to see me a couple of times in the US in the early and mid 80’s, but I have lost track of him. Bernard, Jean-Paul, Jonathan and the Gaertners are dear friends with whom I still have regular contact.
As this was the days before the internet, I wrote frequently to Becky-sometimes two letters a day. Sometimes she sent me two letters a day. People back home were taking bets that I would meet some cute young lady(and we really did have some NICE looking young women in my classes) and would send her a ‘dear Becky letter.” Not having Becky in France was tough, but if she had been there, I would not have had the free time to have established the relationships and meet the people who I met. The year abroad ended up making our relationship even tighter, and I was able to expand my horizons and meet a lot of interesting and new people who I would not have met had I stayed in northeast Iowa.
When you study abroad, you experience kind of a culture shock initially. I was no different. It took awhile to get used to the red-tape, poor customer service and arbitrary rules in the French system. Over time, you adapt. By the end of my year abroad in France, I was depressed about going back to the States. I was in my comfort zone, I had great friends, classes that I liked. I was actually kind of down by the time my plane got back to Minneapolis. During that year, I had matured a lot. It exposed me to people and discussions that I never would have experienced had I stayed home. Oh yeah, I also got hooked on Rugby while in France. Who knew it would take me over 20 years to actually play the game.
There have been other times in my life where I decided to get out of my comfort zone: enlisting in the Air Force, making the decision to leave hospital nursing for phone triage nursing when I did not even know where the on and off switch was on a computer, hosting exchange students when my kids were young, and deciding to try to pick up the game of rugby in my mid-forties. All of these experiences have enriched my life in ways that are beyond words. I also think that for people who feel like they are in a rut, they might want to try something different, I think you need to remember the motto of the British Special Air Services (SAS):
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