Teen Trek 2021 (English Project)

Self Awareness is an essential life skill and capability; however, I only discovered its importance after spending three days hiking with a group of strangers for my Silver Duke of Edinburgh Expedition.

This capability is defined as having a continuous knowledge of one’s character, behaviour, values and feelings, and a person’s ability to recognise their strengths and weaknesses and their impact on others.

Teen Trek 2021 helped me to realise how essential self-awareness is, as I was constantly pushed out of my comfort zone, and put in situations where my decisions and actions would affect a large number of people.

One example of this was during the hiking portion of our journey, where throughout the trip, we would nominate one person to lead the group. On one of the three days, I was selected, by the rest of the group to be the leader for a portion of the journey. When leading the group, I was in charge of looking at the map and choosing which path we would take. As we were on an expedition without road signs or markers, taking a wrong turn could set us back hours, and potentially cause us to become lost. When I began leading the group, I was overly cautious, and would constantly ask our expedition leader if I was right. This caused my group to question my judgement, and always double check the route I chose. During this time, I started to notice the impact of my actions and behaviour on others, and realised I had to be, and show confidence in my decisions to put the group at ease, and allow them to trust my judgement. When doing this activity, it allowed me to identify my strengths and weaknesses, and with this information, find out ways to better highlight my assets. I also put a high value on the opinions of others and would seek them out if I was unsure of where we were supposed to be going, instead of our expedition leader.