Why it is so important to move out of your comfort zone once in a while...

Rickett Glenn Waterfalls
with my Women's Adventure Club of Centre County, PA hiking buddies

    

My colleague Alexandra Mihai, an academic staff developer at Maastricht University, who is also doing a Fulbright in the US at the moment, and is also based at the Porvoo Center for Teaching and Learning at Yale, recently reflected on her stay. When reading her words, it resonated so much. She listed the following five points as the most important learnings from her stay in the US so far:

• the power of keeping an open mind
• the power of connections
• the power of  changing perspectives
• the power of a bird's eye view
• the power of kindness and gratitude

I so agree. My stay at PennState was my first sabbatical since becoming an academic, my first break from the South African higher education context in more than 10 years. It reminded me about the importance of moving out of your comfort zone, how refreshing it is to start somewhere new, to discover a new place, new people, new practices. I also re-discovered how good I am at being in a new place and making this place my home, all by myself. The three months at PennState were not just my first stay outside South Africa in a long time, but also the first time I did this by myself, without my partner or my family, in a really long time. And it felt so good to be reminded, of how much I enjoyed starting afresh somewhere, how much energy I gain from that. But also how different it feels, when for the first time in such a long time, I was only responsible for myself, only had to look after myself and my needs. 

One of the most beautiful experiences in State College was the finding and building of connections and relationships. Friendships even which will hopefully last longer than my stay. The ability to be open and really listen to others. Often, here at home, I am so busy and so distracted, it's hard for me to really focus on conversations. At State College I had the headspace and maybe emotional heartspace to open up to new people, new relationships, new connections. The conversations I had with friends and colleagues, who became friends, on long walks in the surroundings of State College, were the most precious moments of my whole trip. Conversations about the practice of academic staff development, but also about life in general, about the different ways of being and living, different ways of finding community, different ways of lives well lived.  But also the ability to join webinars and conferences, read and engage with new ideas and thoughts.

Moving out of my comfort zone, not only opened me up to new relationships, but also to new ways of seeing life, both my personal and my professional life. I have worked in South African academia for more than 10 years now, and it was refreshing to see a different context, how practices are similar but also different. I found a new way of making sense of my own practice, the ability to position myself in terms of my beliefs around academic staff development, mandates and workings of Centres for Learning and Teaching, but also about the orientations of institutions and how these impact on our practices. The combination of a different context but also the time to think, to be away from our daily responsibilities, our daily grind, gave me so much time to dream up new projects, imagine new research avenues, get interested in new thoughts and perspectives. I just felt my creativity come back, after what feels like years and years of just trodding along. It was liberating. 

And similar to Alexandra, what I am most grateful for, is the openness and kindness people I met offered to me. It might be the context, a small college town in rural Pennsylvania, but it's been a long time since I experienced such generosity among others, who opened their homes and hearts to me.  The security I felt in the three months in State College, was unsettling, so different from what I feel in South Africa. I came back full, full of ideas, conversations, people. But also with a desire to come back to my own life, recognising and cherishing what I have here in Cape Town.