What I Learned from Jumping Out of a Moving Car

Just about two weeks ago, going thirty miles an hour on Interstate Route 81 South, I jumped out of a car. Before you close your browser tab and cost us some precious website traffic, I implore you not to match my level of impulsivity. I know it sounds insane, especially as an opener to a collegiate blog. And that’s partly because it is—pigs are pink, and jumping out of moving vehicles is bonkers. While I claim mental sanity and ensure the action wasn’t an intentional way of harming myself, it obviously still wasn’t a rational decision.  

Believe it or not, though—and at the risk of making myself sound even more absurd, rolling out onto the right-hand shoulder of a major highway actually taught me a few things. To save you the grief (and sprains) from pulling such a stunt, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned. You might want to buckle up for this one—it’s going to be quite the trip, and I wouldn’t want you, say… falling out.   

I’ll start at the scene of the crime. I was headed to rowing practice, sitting on the far-right seat in the back of my teammate’s vehicle. It was approximately 4:30 in the morning, starkly dark with the kind of cold drizzle that makes us rowers want to cower back under the covers. I had been stressed beyond capacity the previous night, stuck on a calculus assignment I hadn’t understood, toppled with three other pressing deadlines I’d have to face the next day. Couple that with having to wake up at 3:50 in the morning, and I was a bit tense. One of my roommates had gotten home that night, took one look at my face, and immediately kept walking down the hall. I don’t blame her; she hadn’t agreed to sign a lease with a feral raccoon.  

The stress had followed me to the next morning, where I sat in the car, half-asleep and probably dreaming of a hot shower and some chocolate. My euphorically drowsy state didn’t last long, though—because suddenly, one of my teammates said they felt like they were going to throw up. As a very anxious person, I’d gone through a lot of childhood fears: obstacle courses, heights, even bubbles (at the toddler level)—but the worst and most unresolved of them was the fear of vomit. At the age of 10, I’d been diagnosed with emetophobia, and it’s arguably gotten better as I’ve grown up, but there was something about that specific moment where I just… lost it. I unbuckled my seatbelt, somehow defied the odds of the child lock, and jumped out.  

The car was reportedly going thirty miles an hour as I took my leap of faith—and it felt like it. As I hit the ground, I rolled out onto the gravel, sliding at least ten or fifteen feet in the process. It was a miracle I didn’t crack my head open or get run over by the car itself. My phone, which was somehow still clutched in my hand as I stalled to a stop, prepared to send out an emergency crash alert. I disabled it, then took a look at my hands. My knuckles were bloodied up, presumably from the gravel I’d landed on, and I could feel that bruises would later form on my ribs and left foot—but I was okay. I stood up on shaky legs, dusted myself off, and slowly walked back to the car in absolute and total shock.  

This stunt of mine, of course, was met with complete shock from my teammates. Anger and concern circulated in the outside air, but I didn’t hear any of it—I reassured everyone I was okay and got back into the car. The rest of the ride to practice was painstakingly quiet. When we arrived at Claytor Lake, my teammates filled my coach in with me on standby, looking like a disheveled noodle. With an unmatched expression, he glanced at me in my shaken-up glory and asked if I was okay.  

To preface my response to this—there’s this stereotype that rowers are uber-committed to their sport; that it would take another dinosaur-wiping meteor to stop one of us from getting back into a boat. I’m not sure how true that is—but in that moment, I looked at him in my adrenaline-overloaded state, laughed a little, and said, “Well, I guess I’m still okay to row.” And he’d let me—if anything, to avoid arguing with his deranged athlete who’d just free-launched herself out onto one of America’s most dangerous interstates. So, less than twenty minutes after I’d practically risked my life, I had voluntarily sat my slightly bruised butt into a boat to row. Clearly, I wasn’t helping the stereotype

.  

To justify, I’d known a relaxed workout was scheduled, and I desperately needed a distraction to calm myself. I thereby went into a perpetual state of contemplation. I drank up every second of that row, hearing the oarlocks click in a steady rhythm as I absorbed the silent silhouette of my surroundings. Although this wasn’t the prettiest of mornings—I’d grown to expect shooting stars protruding out of the Milky Way in the lake’s glassy reflection—I was witnessing it differently. It was a detached, surreal type of stunning. That’s the only way I can describe it. 

This lovely little revelation ended as soon as I tried to step foot back on the dock and realized I’d definitely done something to my ankle. Reality whirled back into my being—assignments I’d left unattended, various club meetings, exams—oh, and didn’t I have a load of laundry to do? But I stopped myself. This, whether I wanted to admit it or not, was the exact cause. It wasn’t a jump out of fear—it was my body’s literal cultivation of burnout. This is what had led me to such an extreme reaction in a moment of otherwise minor stress—I was overwhelmed. Approaching this semester, I felt like I hadn’t been doing enough, so I’d signed myself up for five extracurriculars, topped off with a lab and some more difficult classes. My friends told me I was overdoing it—but I hadn’t listened. Quite frankly, I should have.  

“You’ve been go-go-go for the whole semester,” one of my roommates said as I sat on the couch with ice slumped over my ankle. “When you jumped out of the car, your body was probably saying ‘get out,’ and your mind was probably saying ‘enough of this.’ What you’re doing isn’t sustainable.”  

I chewed on this for a minute. There was nothing to argue with. I was pulling almost 19-hour days, routinely running off 5 hours of sleep, and stocking up my weekends with social plans that I hadn’t been able to attend during the week. It was saddening that it had taken me a sprained ankle and a bruised rib cage to take a break.  

So given this, I’ve done some reevaluation. Just because I can’t “do it all” doesn’t make me worth any less. And the same pertains to you. Allow yourself some grace; be a human once and a while. As my coach preaches, “You can do anything, but not everything.” So, keep your aspirations high, keep your standards sharp—but not at the cost of your wellbeing. “You’ve got one life,” my friend likes to say. “You’ve got to live it for you.” She’s right—but please, for your own sake—keep your seatbelt on while you do.  

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