Confession time: I had a phase freshman year of college when I would watch that Baz Luhrmann “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” YouTube video just about every day in order to try and put myself in the right philosophical mindset for starting a whole new life at an entirely new school where I knew no one. If you’ve never seen it before, PLEASE watch it as soon as possible (aka now):
Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)
While I tried to follow a good amount of the advice dispensed in that video during my first year at Georgetown, from not worrying about the future to stretching to not feeling guilty for not being sure of what I wanted to do with my life, the one thing I think I failed to do was to “do something everyday that scare[d me.]” If you know me well, you probably know that I’m scared of a pretty decent number of things—heights, snakes, roller coasters…and the list goes on. When I got to college freshman year, I was overwhelmed by all the change and by the constant rush of meeting countless new people, and I didn’t have time (or maybe just didn’t put in a huge effort) to really push myself out of my comfort zone. This is probably one of the major reasons I got the shocked reactions that I did upon telling people I was going to be studying abroad in Australia for a semester; I’m pretty sure the majority of the people I told imagined me surrounded by spiders while simultaneously bungee jumping and skydiving without wearing any sunblock in the middle of the Australian summer, a bunch of my fears all rolled into one. While I haven’t done any of those things yet—neither simultaneously nor individually—I’ve really been trying to push myself to do things that I would normally say no to, or basically to say yes to everything that crosses my path.
While coming here without knowing anyone was definitely one of the scarier aspects of studying abroad here in Sydney, I’ve somehow managed to be outgoing enough to make friends to do all of these scary things with! For one, over my spring break trip to Cairns in Queensland, I went scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, something I had been anxious about since my friends and I planned the trip in early March. In retrospect I realize how amazing and not frightening at all that sounds, but in that moment, with a scuba tank that probably weighed more than me strapped to my back, all I could think was that I was going to run out of air, lose the instructor who was taking me down through the reef, or just completely panic as soon as I hit the water. When I actually got down there, though, felt the coral drift beneath my arms and saw huge, bright fish, my breathing felt completely natural and I was overtaken by a strange sense of calm. It was truly an incredible experience and one that I probably wouldn’t have been able to have had a few years ago because I would have been too afraid to try it.
Not only have I gone scuba diving, but I also had the opportunity to go camping on Fraser Island—the largest sand island in the world—for a few days, spending the weekend surrounded by wild dingoes (we actually had to carry huge sticks every time we walked to the bathroom in case they attacked us), being driven around the island in a semi-rickety four-wheeler by people I had met two days before, and watching out for a snake that can apparently kill you within half an hour of its biting you. I’m not quite sure how I made it back to Sydney in one piece, but I managed to survive the weekend, meet a lot of new people from all over the world (word of advice: never let a German drive you around in a four-wheeler), and witness a dingo steal my friend’s flip flop (true story). So while I haven’t been skydiving, bungee jumping, or covered in spiders yet, I think the small steps I’ve been taking have been leading me in the right, Baz Luhrmann-oriented direction.
