Seek Discomfort Club
Seek Discomfort Club empowers students at Georgia Tech to get out of their comfort zone in order to grow as people and leaders. We do this by hosting weekly events that challenge students in a variety of ways. Some of our most popular events include skydiving, sunrise hikes, polar plunges, and open mic nights.
I was the founder of Seek Discomfort Club back in 2020 and the club has since grown to over 500 members. We have had people complete Ironman Triathlons, start their own businesses, and give TedX talks with the help of the club and our community.
My freshman year of college, I was looking for an outlet on campus to empower me to get out of my comfort zone and was shocked to find that there was nothing like that at Georgia Tech. I wanted to create a community of people who were willing to challenge themselves and grow as people and leaders, but I also wanted to make sure that I was qualified to lead such a community.
So, I decided to train for a marathon, despite never having ran more than two miles in my life. Through the process of training for the marathon, I was able to find clarity on how I wanted this community to look and feel.
Despite starting the club during the height of the pandemic, we focused on in-person events that would allow people to connect with each other, and the greater Georgia Tech community in valuable ways.
As we grew, the structure of the club and its place on campus became more formalized. In the early days, we concentrated on doing a lot of events that were very visible on campus in order to attract new members. Some of these events included dancing with strangers in public, leaving encouraging sticky notes in the library, and handing out rubber ducks to strangers.
We made sure to keep interactions with the community extremely positive and high-energy in order to attract new members. We also made sure to do plenty of collaborative events with other clubs on campus in order to broaden our impact.
As leadership changed hands, dynamic new ways of challenging our members were introduced. I am proud to say that the club only continued to grow in size and impact after I stepped down as president, which is a testament to the club attracting the right kind of people and creating a culture that is conducive to growth.
