Comfort outside comfort zone
MY Dad asked me the other day how life outside university is going, and it got me thinking about how that said life has changed.
What is the biggest difference I’ve noticed in the mere week since completing my undergraduate and entering the “real world” that follows university?
Simple: the lack of guilt that no longer overwhelms me with every waking moment that isn’t spent doing some sort of university-related task.
For the past three years nearly every decision I have made, whether it was to watch another episode of that binge worthy TV series on Netflix, or to go out on the Saturday night before a major assignment due a few days later, came with a steaming hot side dish of guilt.
Guilt that I was not spending that time getting a head start on my assignments or doing the 100-plus hours of independent study that the unit guide said that I should be doing for each subject (which would add up to well over 400 hours each semester might I add).
Now I find myself overwhelmed with this weird sensation of being able to say yes to pretty much anything without having to double check how many assignments I am yet to complete and when they are due. If my life was the sun, university was Earth: essentially, my life revolved around university and not a lot more for those three years. But now I have this new-found freedom that comes with less guilt, less stress and so much more available time. Quite frankly, since university I don’t know what to do with it all. Aside from the countless assignments and gallons of stress tears that took over my life for the past three years, university was structured; and as much as I’d like to consider myself a spur-of-the-moment, spontaneous kind of girl, the reality is that 99 per cent of the time that’s not me.
Scheduling things months in advance, creating lists for everyday tasks and being able to tick off things as I complete them is a guilty pleasure for me.
The many lists and schedules university gave me no longer exist.
The comfort zone that came from those structured 12-week semesters is gone.
But if being outside of what I would now consider my old comfort zone means being able to not spend a single second worrying about getting started on the next assignment, then I’ll happily embrace my new life outside of this comfort zone.