Getting Over My Fear of Driving - Allie Sullivan

In my driver's ed class in high school my teacher showed us frightening and graphic videos that were meant to scare us into being safe drivers. But they scared me a little too much. You shouldn't be overconfident and reckless when you drive but you do need to be confident to be a safe driver. I feel that I lack that confidence and the only way to build it is to drive more.

I just got a car from my grandparents this month and before this weekend I had only driven it to the grocery store nearby. This weekend, I wanted to push myself to drive somewhere out of Provo I had never driven before so I drove myself to a family dinner in Salt Lake. I was especially nervous about driving on the freeway because I've seen how fast people drive on the freeways in Utah. This would be a perfect opportunity to get over that fear.

I took my cousin with me and he helped me navigate which made things a lot easier. The drive there and back went really well and by really well I mean nobody ended up hospitalized which was my worst fear.

And there was a pleasant bonus that I had not anticipated. Usually, my grandpa will come pick me and my cousin up and take us to family dinner and the two of them will discuss things about engineering the whole time and I just sit in the back being bored. But with just my cousin and I, we got to have a really nice conversation and get to know each other better. We talked a lot about our dating woes which was cathartic and we even made plans to someday do a group date together.

I was hoping that this experience would help me be a more confident driver and it certainly did but it also helped me build a friendship with my cousin. So I guess the take home lesson here is that sometimes there are more benefits to doing new things than just the most obvious ones and you never know what those benefits might be until you do it.