Take a Chance, Make the Leap!
By Katie (Titus) Larson (BS ’05)
Although leaving the state of Illinois to attend The University of Iowa may be seen as leaving your comfort zone for 
some, I truly never made a conscious effort to stretch my comfort zone until I took Professor Scott McNabb’s “Human Relations for the Classroom” course as an undergraduate.
In his course, Prof. McNabb explained the importance of getting in touch with our discomforts and prejudices and trying to break them. Sure, roller coasters have been known to make me cry in fear, but I never thought I was one to be frightened of life’s social experiences. I was never as scared as when Professor McNabb asked me to find the most uncomfortable social situation I could think of and just “do it.”
At that time, I was able to recognize a surprising prejudice that I had against Asian people. I blamed it on the fact that I did not grow up near many Asians. Then, in college I lived above Aeoshe grocery store where I had to get to know many in a short time. When Prof. McNabb assigned me the task of getting to know the owners more personally, I became nervous. My heart palpitated and my palms sweat at the very thought of having to have a conversation with them. However, after reaching out we slowly became friends and I developed a respect for the Asian culture that I never had before.
Surviving that simple incident caused something to awaken inside me.
Prior to Prof. McNabb’s course, I did not realize the breadth of my life. Shortly after his course, I realized that there was much more to life out in the world and that I needed to expand reality as I knew it. I signed up to teach in New Zealand for four months. From there I traveled to Australia, then Hong Kong, where I really got to test my new love of Asian culture. Upon returning home and getting a job in Illinois, I stayed put for a while, but soon got restless and had to leave again.
I worked in Costa Rica one summer, then Peru the next. This year, I participated in a graduate program through Miami of Ohio University called “Project Dragonfly,” which encourages international travel and creates cultural connections with partnering countries. This summer, I traveled to China to visit Beijing, and spent two weeks in Mongolia working with local scientists to create the roots of a master’s project that I hope to continue over the next two summers in Africa and Thailand.
I picked up the phrase, “leave your comfort zone,” in Prof. McNabb’s class. In Mongolia, an instructor introduced me to the idea of “stretching your comfort zone.” I believe that she had a good perspective on this because, I have to admit, after traveling the world and experiencing other culture’s versions of “normal,” my understanding of “normal” has stretched quite a bit.
When working with young adults, it is important to remember that “normal” is relative. You are exposed to hundreds of different types of personalities and cultures every day. It is so valuable to realize the fundamental unique qualities that each of them brings into the classroom and celebrate those differences. By celebrating diversity in your classroom, students get the important message that different is okay. They begin to believe that they can learn something from those who are different. And hence the peer-learning process begins. As teachers, we forget sometimes that students learn just as much from each other as they do from us.
Every year that I travel somewhere new, my students are bound to ask me, “Why would you want to go there?” (Except Costa Rica, apparently every kid wants to go there!) To which I reply, “Why not?” Most of them smile at me, pause for a second, and then say, “Okay, I get it!”
Maybe they get it, maybe they don’t. But it is my hope to get that, “Why not?!” message across somehow. This phrase can be used to answer many of life’s biggest questions and guarantees an interesting, dynamic experience whatever you do.
People often comment to me that I am so lucky to have traveled so many places in the world. I usually explain to them that it is not luck and if they wanted, they, too, are able to stretch their comfort zone and take the risk of getting to know people from cultures other than their own.
That interaction with my neighbors above Aeoshe grocery not only helped me break my prejudice, but caused me to begin to really live life. I enjoy traveling the world, but more importantly I have confidence in putting myself in culturally uncomfortable situations abroad and here at home. I can honestly pinpoint that experience as a catalyst for how I live my life now.
Scott plays the teacher role, and spouts, “Oh, I only led you there, bla bla bla.” But I have to say, as a person who was always interested in science, I never realized how important humanity and culture really is. Thanks to Professor McNabb’s well-crafted lesson, I will always have a more well-rounded view of life. I only hope that I can lead by example and create lessons for my own students that are as life changing as the one he gave me. You just never know how far your lessons may reach in this world!
Larson was McNabb’s student in the summer of 2004 and completed her Honors project, “Adolescent Adjustment from Urban to Rural Settings,” with him in the spring of 2005. For more information on Project Dragonfly/Earth Expeditions visit www.projectdragonfly.org.
