Anxiety-Challenge by another name

Between my sophomore and junior year at college

，

a chance came up

for

me

to

spend

the

summer

vacation

working

on

a

ranch

in

Argentina.

My

roommate’s

father

was

in

the

cattle

business,

and

he

wanted

Ted

to see something of it. Ted said he would go if he could take a

friend, and he chose me. The idea of

spending

two months

on the

fabled Argentina pampas

was exciting. Then I began have second

thoughts

. I had

never

been

very

far from England, and I had been

homesick my first few weeks

at

college. What would it be like in

a strange country? What about the language? And besides, I had

promised

to

teach

my

younger

brother

to

sail

that

summer.

The

more

I

thought

about

it,

the

more

the

prospect

daunted

me.

I

began

waking

up nights in sweat.

In

the

end,

I

turn

down

the

proposition.

As

soon

as

Ted

asked

somebody

else

to

go,

I

began

kicking

myself.

A

couple

of

weeks

later

I

went

home

to

my

old

summer

job,

unpacking

cartons

at

the

local

supermarket,

feeling

very

low.

I

had

turn

down

something

I

wanted

to

do

because

I was scared, and had ended up feeling depressed. I stayed that

way for a long time. And it didn’t help when I

went

back college

in

the

fall

to

discover

that

Ted

and

his

friend

had

had

a

terrific

time.

In the long run that unhappy summer taught me a valuable lesson

out

of

which

I

developed

a

rule

for

myself:

do

what

makes

you

anxious;

don’t do what makes you depressed.

I am not, of cause, talking about severe states of anxious, which

require medical attention. What I mean is that kind of anxiety we

call state fright, butterflies in the stomach, a case of nerves-

the feelings we have

at

a job interview, when we are giving a big

party,

when

we

have

to

make

an

important

presentation

at

the

office.

And the kind of depression I am referring to is that downhearted

feeling

of

blues,

when

we

don’t

seem

to

be

interested

in

anything,

when we can’t going and seem to have no energy.

I was confronted by this sort of situation toward the end of my

senior

year.

As

graduation

approached,

I

began

to

think

about

taking

a crack at making my living as a writer. But one of my professors

was urging me to apply to graduate school and aim at

a

teaching

career.

I

wavered

.

The

idea

of

trying

to

live

by

writing

was

a

lot

more

scary than spending a summer on the pampas, I thought.

Back

and forth I went, making my decision, unmaking it.

Suddenly, I