Growing up, I always felt self-conscious about myself. I was always anxious to try new things as I feared I would fail. This made me afraid to get into new and different social scenes, as my social anxiety would hit the most and cause me to isolate myself. When I isolated myself, I felt the most comfortable and the most at peace. Although I still do this, I realized I was missing out on a brand-new world all because I did not step out of my comfort zone. In college, I promised myself this would all change. When I got to college, I decided to join the band. I found the band really entertaining, especially because the band consisted of people my age that looked like me and had a lot of talent. This was the first time stepping out of my comfort zone because, in high school, I did not join any social clubs. In the band, I was a manager where I was able to assist people, and I met many cool people. In my head, I was really proud of myself, but I knew it was not enough.
The next year I decided to join the band’s flag line. This was different from anything I have ever done. To be in the spotlight was the scariest thing I have ever done, yet I wanted to break out of my shell. Each week we had a performance. Every week was tougher than the last because the flag line moves were hard for me to learn because it was my first time using a flag. I was a bit annoyed because I felt that I did not learn the moves as fast as everyone else. This was a little different for me because in my academics I usually learned things pretty quickly but performing never came easy to me. I was so anxious about messing up. I felt like throwing up each time I went on the football field to perform. Although I was scared, I still went out there and put my best foot forward. Although I did mess up in most of the performances, I was elated that I actually went against my fear in order to come out of my comfort zone. The next thing I did that put my fear to the test was entering the Disney on the Yard Case Competition. I never doubted how smart I was, but competing against different HBCUs in this contest did make me nervous. The team was given the task of creating a model that helped the environment in our local community. I had the task of seeing how much our design would cost and calculating the financials for the overall model. I was so fearful of making a mistake and costing my team not winning at all. Luckily, I put aside my fear and turned in the best financial models to contribute to the overall cost to where we were able to win. Based on all the efforts of my team and me, we were able to turn in a successful project.