Once the chairlift dropped us off, I was a bat out of hell. Although what happened next was painful, it would have looked professional on camera. Passersby congratulated me on what they thought was an attempt at some impressive stunt. As I laid buried and stretched mountainside, I wondered how I got myself in this position.

New experiences were old hat for me by now, but this time, I was completely out of my element. My friends kept shoving the word “pizza” down my throat, as if I even knew what that meant. Being a Chicago native, this concept was completely foreign. The most massive mountain we have is a manmade two-foot hill and having to slow down is the last thing on a skier’s mind.

Standing up was another challenge. After a few attempts of budging my legs and flipping my skis over to my other side, I began to laugh from exhaustion. With that, I stripped off my boots, hiked down the second half of the mountain and proudly made my way to the bunny hills.

There I met a young kid with a discouraging story about how he fell off a chairlift a few years back and broke his leg. Somehow, I was happily allowing this kid to convince me to never ski again and possibly relive my nasty wipeout.

I looked over at him and thought I caught a glimpse of an old man sitting next to me who had grey beard and seasoned wrinkles forming around eyes that had been to the end of the world and back. I wiped the melted snow from my goggles and the vision of the old man returned to that of a youngster with his head held high and the determination to overcome his fear of returning to the slopes.

After the ride and a few successful runs under our belts, we went our separate ways. While he became king of the hills, I was bound for an upgrade, as I was not going to let a little fear and painful fall keep me from conquering a new challenge; for I had already overcome something like this before. Although move-in day or meeting new friends in college was not as physically strenuous as skiing, I still had to have the guts to move forward.

So with the help of a PB&J, a little encouragement from a ten year-old, and some friends to film my every slip-up, I refused to run from the most challenging thing a freshman from out-of-state could face – a mountain.