To be perfectly honest, I hated camp. I felt as though I had better things to do at home and missed all the water polo tryouts held on the days I had camp. However, I feel that camp was a valuable experience that taught me more about the leadership characteristics in myself. The chance to use teamwork skills was also provided at times during the camp.
An example of my teamwork qualities was evident during the hike with those who couldn’t keep up. It was necessary for those who could keep up to communicate with the slower team members and encourage them to maintain their hiking performance. Fortunately, although some were slow none in our group had any injuries so our first aid skills weren’t challenged. We were on a rocky trail and had been advised to use Marco-Polo to ensure that we weren’t so far away that someone could have been lost. Those of us in the lead didn’t criticise the slower members, we were just happy that we all finished the hike without any difficulties.
On one of the days we went abseiling down a cliff into the gorge and my independence and resilience meant that I had the confidence to go first out of my group. Half way down I was on the part when the cliff had a small indent which stopped me from using my legs to push off the wall, instead I had to work out a way I could swing enough to reach the back of the indent to push off and abseil down to the ground. The fact that I had to rely on myself to solve the abseiling allowed me to use my thinking skills and saved me from panicking and probably falling. Even though I disliked camp for the reasons I gave before, an thinking about the experience, certainly put some skills into practice and learnt some new skills.