Story by Adriana Diaz
HUQOQ, Israel — As I walked out of the first pre-departure meeting for my trip to Israel, I felt a sense of dread come over me. I felt out of my league, worried that I lacked the experience to report on the Huqoq Excavation Project, an excavation led by Professor Jodi Magness of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It seemed as if everyone knew each other and had the experience to take on such a task.
Fast-forward two months and my anxieties had only partly subsided, mostly to give way to my initial excitement about traveling abroad for only the second time in my life. Yet as I sat in the airport waiting to board my flight, I still had a thousand worries running through my head. I second-guessed my photography skills, wondered if I would ever make friends with the people I was embarking on my trip with, and missed being in the comfort of my home, now only 170 miles away but soon to be over 6,000 miles away.
Coming back to the kibbutz after my first day at the dig site, that dread I’d felt months before came flooding back, this time in preparation for the hours I would have to spend looking through and editing the hundreds of photos I’d already taken. I sat down at the kibbutz, took a deep breath, and began to sort through my photos.
They were immediately discouraging. With no particular direction in mind, I had walked around and taken photos of anything I thought might be interesting. They weren’t bad photos; there was just too much variety and disorder for me to be able to thoroughly organize them.
I felt a rush of panic surge through my body as my fear of messing up the one job I had seemed to manifest. I looked around at the quiet lobby where a few people in my group were scattered, all working on their own projects. I decided to talk to Will, the other photographer in my group, to see where he was at with his work.
Within seconds of our conversation, I felt more at ease. He expressed his own worries, and I realized we both were concerned over the disorganization of our photos and began to collaborate in a way that gave us direction and ease. By confiding in each other, I was able to see how ridiculous it was to have expected myself to be 100 percent confident and prepared for the task at hand. No one was, but they were simply doing the best they could with the skills they had. This made me feel surer of myself as I saw someone as talented as Will also have some of the same concerns as me.
Over the next few days, I realized more and more that I could not keep doubting my abilities as a photographer because it would keep me from trying my hardest.
This wave of confidence continued to be inspired by the others in my group. Seeing how talented and hardworking they all were made me feel honored to be a part of this project and made me realize I, too, am talented and capable of any task thrown my way. I refused to allow myself the time to second-guess myself, instead keeping myself in the moment and not worrying about getting the perfect shot every time I pressed the shutter. Soon the worries that racked my brain just a few days before had subsided, and I felt confident in the photos I had taken.
