James Collier Anxiety Challenge By Another Name Summary

Everyone gets nervous when they have to do something new or something they are not comfortable with. It’s normal and it’s apart of growing up. The result of these situations will make you a more knowledgeable and experienced person. This is what best describes James Collier in his article “Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name.” Collier is an author, journalist and musician. His most notable book My Brother Sam Is Dead, was a Newberry Honor book and was nominated for a National Book Award in 1975. He is also a renowned traveler and has adventured the world. Collier could never have gotten to where he is now in life without taking risks and overcoming his fears. Every person has fears and anxiety about something, it’s overcoming these worries and

He was given an opportunity to become a journalist for a magazine. He took up the offer, but Collier states that he got anxious when he had to interview famous individuals. He said, “Before each interview I would get butterflies and my hands would shake” (95). While writing an article about music, one of his favorite composers, Duke Ellington had the same fear as him, just in a different setting. “If the highly honored Duke Ellington, who had appeared on the bandstand some 10,000 times over thirty years, had anxiety attacks, who was I to think I could avoid them?” (95). This helped Collier realize that he’s not the only one with anxiety and it helped him overcome it, “If you put an individual in an anxiety-provoking situation often enough, he will eventually learn that there isn’t anything to be worried about” (95).

Concluding the story, Colliers dream about traveling out of the country came true. He was offered a writing assignment that required him to travel to Europe for 3 months. Similar to Collier’s first encounter with travel anxiety he began to worry about the trip. He developed another rule, “You can’t learn if you don’t try” (96). Learning from these rules, he took the job and went overseas. There were many ups and downs but in the end Collier was very successful in his travels. He become a very experienced traveler and never backed down from any

I have always been a very social person my entire life. That all changed when I had to interact with people in a language I was not comfortable with. This made me very shy and to myself. On the inside I wanted to make tons of friends, but to everyone else I seemed antisocial. I realized I had to force myself out of my comfort zone and start engaging into conversations. I thought to myself, “I came all the way to America to finish school and I didn’t want to do it without friends. “ I overcame my fears of being self conscious with English and made many friends. After that, school was very enjoyable and less