Be Comfortable Being Uncomfortable   

Written by: Theresa Przepiorka 

In my life I have always viewed change in a negative light. Whenever something in my life was about to alter, I would feel scared and worried. As I got older, I realized not everybody views change as a bad thing. It honestly made me want to alter how I viewed change. After talking to some family and friends I learned that change makes you grow as a person. I also realized that it’s better to be uncomfortable, because being uncomfortable helps you grow more as a person.

So far this year I have experienced a lot of change. And I am finally realizing it was all for the better. One of the biggest changes I have encountered was having a summer internship. I figured in college I would need at least one internship experience. When I began college, I was a Biology major. I had no idea where I wanted to do an internship, or what my internship should consist of. Later in college I switched my major to Nursing. After doing some research I learned that most nursing students do not have internships, since they have clinical, they sometimes have externships. To make myself uncomfortable and to gain more experience I applied to an internship at Germer International at the advice of my counselor through the Philadelphia Futures program.

The internship was so different from anything I had ever encountered in my life. It was an office environment, in the pharmaceutical/biotech recruiting industry, and it was a further commute. After thinking it over even though I didn’t need it for nursing, I wanted something different, I decided to take on the challenge, even though it was out of my comfort zone. I wanted to learn new skills and this internship helped me do that.

I have learned how work is in an office environment. The team here at Germer International has been helpful when I have had questions. They are positive, supportive, and great people to work with. I gained knowledge on how to navigate through a database, how to schedule myself, and how to use my resources to figure out a problem. All these skills will be applicable in my future.

Before I began my internship, I thought it would give me experience in a different field other than nursing. Yet, the skills I learned at my internship can be helpful in the nursing field in numerous ways. I will be more familiar with databases, which will help me record everything I do as a nurse. I will also know how to prioritize, since I learned how to make my own schedule.

Using my resources is another key strategy I learned here. I use my resources to figure out an answer to a problem I have. If I still can’t figure out a solution, I then ask a question. This will help me in nursing, because I have experienced being a part of a team before becoming a nurse. The team mindset will carry over to my nursing career, since nurses are a team as well.

I feel more confident when going through a change now after experiencing an amazing change this summer. My internship made me realize that change is a key part of life. I am also changing schools to pursue a nursing degree, which I was nervous about before. I am happy to say I learned many skills from this internship, and one of them was to have a more positive perspective of changes in life.