29 Sep Life Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone

Written By: Rui Tamura

Getting out of your comfort zone and pushing yourself is scary. People massively grow as a human being when they are out of their comfort zone. Staying in your comfort zone where one feels safe or at ease and without stress can make you complacent.

From my personal experience, living in New Delhi and Michigan had a great impact on my life and helped me grow as a person. I was lucky enough to have a great opportunity to spend my life in Japan, India, and the states due to my father’s job. I spent two years in New Delhi, India through 5th grade and 6th grade but I went to Japanese school. Then my family moved to Michigan and I spent my middle school in Michigan. Although living in these two completely different countries has taught me many important and irreplaceable life lessons, the life I spent there was like a rollercoaster and had to face many challenges. At the end of February 2013, my father told my family that we are moving

to New Delhi. My brother and I were shocked and asked many times why we had to go to India. He works for a Japanese car company, and he was appointed to go there to expand their business to Asia as well as Europe and North America. My father decided to go as a family because experiencing different cultures will lead to seeing the world from a more diverse perspective. Our family had many challenges and obstacles and we had to overcome these problems. By overcoming these problems our family became more united and stronger as a family. At the time, I hated my father but now I’m very thankful and grateful for the opportunity I had there.

Also, living in Michigan was challenging for me since I did not know English. I had to go to a local school there. Learning English and catching up on the class at the same time was hard. I was blessed with wonderful neighbors and friends, and I started to enjoy living there. I made friends through baseball and class. Even though my English was terrible at the time, they were super caring and nice. For Thanksgiving, our neighbors invited us, and we had a wonderful time. Experiencing American culture made me think about my own culture. I felt like people in the US are very nice to strangers compared to Japan because I have never heard of people who invited their neighbors or friends to a Japanese New Year dinner. Living in such a harsh place with a different culture and language from Japan allowed us to grow as a family and as individuals. This growth would not have been possible without the support of those around me, for which I am very grateful. Therefore, I decided to live in an international dorm at a Japanese university and worked as an RA to support international students coming to Japan. By listening to the stories of exchange students there, I learned about the amount of

study and the high level of awareness of various world issues at foreign universities, and I became interested in studying at an American university. Luckily, my school had an exchange program and decided to go to San Francisco State University. Some of you reading this blog may be considering studying abroad. I have one piece of advice for those people. Even if what you want to do is too difficult for you, you should try it. By trying, even if you fail, you will gain something.

Studying abroad might be a great opportunity to get out of your comfort zone for all of you. If you are considering studying in Japan, please talk to me. Please email here: rtamura@sfsu.edu I would like to encourage you to study abroad and love to talk about what you would like to do there. Finally, this experience while I’m studying SFSU is up to me whether it will be worthwhile. I want to spend the rest of my year in a meaningful way while putting pressure on myself.