out of comfort zone

Tell us about an experience in which you left your comfort zone. How did this experience change you?
It was a rural development project initiated by our school in the village of Onde. We had to build a bund (a small scale dam). We had to dig mud, Fill it in the sacks, stitch the sacks and then carry the sacks to the lake to build the bund. It was the first time ever that I was doing such work. We had to work for about 7 hours on the first day. The two main things I did on day 1 was carrying the sacks to the river and digging out mud. Both were very intensive and I had to do a lot of arduous work. We had to make and put in place about 800 sacks over a few days in order to build the bund. This very fact that we had to do so much fascinated me as time passed by that day. After we wrapped up the work for that day we headed up to the place where we were going to stay. It was apparently a resort. As it was set in the rural surrounding the resort did not provide many facilities. There were just 2 large rooms provided for our stay. The place wasn’t so hygienic and importantly they had no proper bathrooms and yes, there were two of them but they were extremely dirty and there about 17 people had to use it. This according to me was the moment when I was totally out of my comfort zone. We had to do physical work the whole day, the sanitation wasn’t so good, I didn’t have a proper place to take a shower in, the food there was not very palatable. I wondered why I was there, what came into my mind was “I’m not here for pleasure. Instead I am here for the sake of the many villagers who suffer from the lack of water. I realised I needed to place others before self. I thought no matter how tired I am no matter how bad this place is I am going to enjoy every bit. We went to work the next day. This time I felt motivated, still as the day passed on I started to wear off. I tried my hand at stitching but I learnt I wasn’t so good at that. So I went back to do physical work. By the end of that day our whole class was able to make and put in place about 500 sacks. It felt pretty good that day knowing we had finished the major portion of the work, this meant that the time to leave was coming near. The resort had a swimming pool and all of us took a dip in it that day. We played water polo for some time what was making me feel weird was that I hadn’t had a bath for 2 days. The dip in the swimming pool was the best we could get at that resort. But for a change that day the food tasted pretty good to me. That day I slept peacefully. The next morning we were to go to work a bit early because it was the last day and we had to complete the project. My body had started aching due to the physical work I had done the previous days. The last day was pretty tough. Finally we completed the project and we left for our city Hyderabad the very next morning. This project taught me to adapt to different conditions. For example- the washroom was dirty for most of the time so it was hard to use it; instead I chose to wake up early in the morning to use the washroom. The initial two days I was complaining about the food served but soon, I actually felt the food was good. This project surely pushed me out of my comfort zone in many ways but I learnt that I need to change and adapt to different conditions to be successful at what I am doing.