My name is Bess Myers and I am a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
I’m so glad you’re here! Scroll to read more about my background.
I am a Media and Journalism Major currently in the application process for the Hussman School of Media and Journalism here at UNC!
I chose Media and Journalism because I have always been creative. I used to just sit in my room as a little girl making up all sorts of stories and games in my imagination. I’ve also always been very good at arguing LOL! My parents always said I would make a great lawyer because I’m so convincing. But that never sounded like fun to me. Leaving high school my senior quote was “I don’t know where I’m going but I promise it won’t be boring.” That is my only goal for myself, to never be bored in my work. That is why I’ve always known I wanted to do something that would allow me to be creative. But I am also very competitive so I knew I wanted to be good at whatever I did. So I chose to play to my strengths and landed on advertising, which in many ways in just a creative way of arguing.
Meet the Author!
John Greene wrote “I go to seek the great perhaps”, and no other quote resonates with me as much as that. I was also always the risk taker of the family. Outgoing, friendly, adventurous, incredibly talkative, headstrong, creative, independent, and fearless. At least that’s what everyone thought. And how could I blame them? For the last three years I’ve basically lived outside my comfort zone. From transferring to boarding school where I knew no one halfway through highschool, to my first solo travel experience, to ski racing, to starting college, all the way to my first brain surgery I barely remember what my comfort zone looks like, which (in hindsight) is a blessing. These experiences all have two things in common; they were difficult, and I had to face them alone. So I guess that means that, for me, being alone and being outside of my comfort zone are synonymous. Moving schools and traveling alone are hard things to do at first, but eventually you meet new people and you have these wonderful experiences that make leaving your comfort zone a little more comfortable. By the end of it you are not so alone. Being sick on the other hand is a very different kind of alone. Because, on the surface, I was constantly surrounded by people who love me or doctors trying to help me and yet at the end of the day I was the most alone a person can be. While my parents were at the hospital with me and at my appointments I was the only one IN them. We may have been in the same building but the waiting room and the OR feel like two different worlds. I was completely alone, only a wall away. Getting sick was the most out of my control and out of my comfort zone thing that’s ever happened to me. But I figure that if I can live through that and come out the other side still fighting and still working and still pushing myself right back outside of my comfort zone then I can go just about anywhere alone and come out the other end better than before. Being sick taught me that I can truly do anything. I am tough and I am strong and I am going to have amazing experiences and I will not let my comfort zone prevent that. Andre Gide once said, “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” I believe that every opportunity I have to push myself outside of my bubble, to scare myself a little bit, to lose sight of the shore, is an opportunity for growth. All these things and more make me sound every bit the fearless kid they all think I am, they make it impossible for me to argue that I’m not courageous at all. They say that I’m modest. I’m not. I’m scared all the time. Scared of wasting my time, of not evolving fast enough, of not loving enough, of not living enough, of doing hard things, and equally so of not doing hard things. I am everything they say I am because I am constantly scared. And I will be the best that I can be in all that I do because I am scared of being less than that. People say you shouldn’t live your life in fear, I wholeheartedly disagree. I do not fear the unknown but the idea of never getting to know the unknown, I do not fear the future for the possibility of wasting the present, and I do not fear mistakes but of never learning from them. It is not a waste of life to live in fear, it is a waste of fear to live without growth. So in my opinion, If you are scared, do it scared, because fear is the cost of truly living.