Self Discovery Research Paper

Sitting on my blue, self-inflating camping mattress with papers around me flitting in the wind, I wondered “how did I get here?” I’d applied to and was accepted to go on a three week camping trip out West. With two days left on this adventure, my fellow participants and I took a long van ride to Shoshone National Park. As we stepped out of the vans we were handed yellow folders full of letters from family, along with keepsakes of short essays, pictures, and quotes meant to supplement our experience. My question lingered, “How did I get here?” I was nearing the end of what was supposed to be the “trip of a lifetime” with the sinking feeling that everyone around me had reached a nirvana-like state of introspection, while I was just wondering what was for dinner.
I wanted to transcend my internal issues, find new friends, and become a worldly person with an understanding of herself beyond anyone back at school or at home. But I hadn’t. I’d depended on one girl to lay out the steps I’d need to take to see change in myself. I’d clung to her the whole trip, and she to me. Together we explored the places we visited with just enough enthusiasm to find an ice cream shop and write a postcard home about it. Despite having the best possible circumstances for personal development, I could never really push myself to venture beyond my comfort zone.
On our final day as we pulled into the parking lot where we’d boarded the vans three weeks ago, I was tired. I joined the group as they sang and cried and hugged and cried some more and I, dry-eyed, thought to myself, “Why aren’t I crying? How did this change their lives and not my own?” As I rode home, I answered my parent’s questions and recalled funny events that happened along our three weeks. I told them about teens on the trip and what they were like, but I realized that, beyond their names and a couple jokes, I didn’t truly know