Coping with Greatest Challenge - Essay Example

What is the greatest challenge or obstacle you've confronted? What are the ways in which you have handled it? How did it change you?

Introduction:

Two years back a significant change occurred in my life, which threw up the greatest challenge, which I had to cope with.

My Greatest Challenge:

I had spent all my life at home with my family till I had to join college. I was basically a home bird, happy with my home environment and the comfort my family gave me. All this changed, when I joined college two years back.

The initial response to this challenge was the usual crying and falling back on at least the comfort of hearing the familiar voices of my family through frequent telephone calls. This went on for some time and then I started realizing that I was falling in arrears of all that I needed to do at college, because of this obsession with home and the sorry state I was in away from home. I needed to do something about it.

I observed that the times when I felt the worst was when I did nothing other than sit and mope about home. So I decided to steep myself in activities indoors with my studies and outdoors in extracurricular activities. My increased effort in my studies saw the return of good grades, my confidence in my academic abilities, and smiles from my tutors and professors. However, it was from the extracurricular activities that I learned a lot that made me a changed person.

I had to interact with a lot of individuals from differing backgrounds and countries in the course of my extracurricular activities. This resulted in me realizing that there was more to the world than the four walls of my home. There was a lot to be learned from interacting with individuals other than my family and developing healthy relationships with them. New perceptions of the world and life emerged from such relationships bringing among other things happiness into my life. I realized that I had missed a lot by limiting myself to my family and the environments of my home. By the end of the first term at college, I was no longer homesick and starting to enjoy my experiences in this new world I had found.

Changes in Me:
I have become more adventurous willing to give new activities a try to see if they suit me. In all, I believe my two years at college, away from home, have made me a better individual with a broader perspective of the world and the individuals that live in it.