As a second semester senior in high school, you already know that I had absolutely nothing to do with my time. So, in an effort to avoid becoming a crack addict, (kidding) I decided to take up reading because I'm probably the biggest loser you will ever meet. The lit teacher I had at the time was one of the best English teachers (not to mention one of the best people) I had met so far, so I was confident that her book recommendations wouldn't disappoint. They didn't. The first book she had told me to read would end up being one of my favorites for the rest of time: My Year With Eleanor by Noelle Hancock.

My Year With Eleanor is a memoir that focuses on one woman's story of the fears she was faced with in her everyday life and how she overcame them. In the beginning of the book, Noelle is laid off from her job and begins to reevaluate her life. The more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that she hasn’t really done anything she was afraid of in a very long time. She talks a lot about how one of the luxuries of being an adult is that you no longer have to do the things that make you uncomfortable. While sitting in a coffee shop one morning, she sees a quote on the bulletin board that would change her life forever. It read, “Do at least one thing per day that scares you, -Eleanor Roosevelt.”

With her 29th birthday right around the corner, she decides that she must face, “A year of fear,” ending on her 30th birthday. Following this, Noelle faces a wide range of fears every single day that are as extreme as skydiving and swimming with sharks, to as simple as telling someone in a movie theatre that the seats next to her were taken. Expectedly, she faces a few ups and downs along the way and is embarrassed a fair amount, but in the end concludes that every one of these fears, no matter the scale, collectively grew her as a person.

Despite sounding cheesy, this book weirdly inspired me to push myself into doing things I wouldn't normally do. In the beginning, Hancock explains that fear is relative: “To some people, stepping up on stage is no big deal, but for me, the mere thought made my heart race” (16). I wondered which fears that I had that others may think of to be no big deal, or vice versa. I loved how instead of solely focusing on extreme fears, like trapeze classes and skydiving, she also faced emotional fears such as meeting up with past boyfriends and asking them what she did wrong. In doing this, a very important message was relayed: More often than not, our biggest fears lay within things like rejection, disappointment, or telling someone what you really think of them. I had never really thought about it this way before.

Now, I know what you're thinking: Is the point of this article really just a sappy book reccomendation that I could've just googled myself?

Well, that's where you're wrong. After reading this book, a friend of mine and I teamed up to make a kick-ass senior thesis that was all about facing our fears. We sat down, made a giant list of things we were afraid of, and gradually checked them off as we faced the fears day by day, filming each other completing them. Our fears had a wide range, from riding on the back of a motorcycle on the highway, to signing a waver to eat Cluck U Chicken's 911 sauce.

Yes. I actually signed a legal document to eat a buffalo sauce. I told you I was probably the biggest loser you would ever meet. Another one of our fears was public embarrassment, and for some reason we thought the perfect opportunity for this was approaching strangers at the beach and asking them if we could hold their baby. (They said yes, by the way. And it was arguably one of the strangest, but funniest moments of my life.) The list goes on and on.

Upon completing our checklist, we compiled the videos of us facing our fears into one giant video and called it a senior thesis. It was easily one of the best things I have ever done. Now, I encourage everyone I meet to read My Year With Eleanor, the book that inspired me to face my fears, which hopefully will inspire them too. Oh, and I got a 98 on that thesis, by the way.