Comfort Levels and Panic! Zones

From my sociology journal: 7/15/07

My first week of Up With People is over, and so far I've pretty much had an overload of information, emotions, and new experiences. We've started learning the songs and dances, and we've sat through several educational sessions as well (including a particularly juicy one about stereotypes).
One of these educational sessions was about different comfort levels. They talked about the comfort zone, which is rather self-explanatory; the challenge zone, which is when one is in a situation in which they feel uncomfortable, yet still in control of their circumstances for the most part; and the panic zone, in which one feels completely out of control of their surroundings. The UWP staff wants us to push our comfort levels during this semester, and visit the challenge zone often.
I've been in the challenge zone during our dancing sessions, seeing as I have never had any formal dancing experience before in my life. It's been somewhat difficult for me to follow all the steps, but over all I think it's been good for me to learn something new. However, I noticed that some of the other students seemed to be in the panic zone for these same activities. One girl was literally in tears because it was so frustrating for her. I'd imagine that it would be pretty scary to be in a foreign country speaking a second language doing something you had no prior experience with. Hopefully I won't be experiencing the panic zone very much this semester.
Tomorrow we will find out which of the two casts we'll be on, and which countries we'll be visiting. Either way I'll be perfectly happy, but I'm just a little worried because either way I'll be on a different cast than some of the people I've started to befriend.