Hey folks, and welcome back to another exciting blog post! Today I will be summarizing the fun activities that we did on our most recent field school, Loon Lake. It was a four-day trip, at a resort next to Loon Lake. The resort is owned by UBC, and it’s nicely built and maintained. During those four days we set goals for ourselves, to achieve the person we want to be.
On the first day we were settling down, we were mainly on the road enjoying ourselves. We went to Popeye’s for lunch, and visited a bird center. At night, we had dinner at the dinning hall, and the food there was divine. Of course “learning advance” must include learning, we spent an hour on reflecting who we are, and how we can become better selves in the future. A simple introduction of this learning advance’s purpose.
On the second day, we had a heck ton of fun. We spent our whole day out in the nature, doing all sorts of activities. We did canoeing, archery, high rope, and rock climbing. We finished the day off by pitching our goal ideas to the teachers, and making them into SMART goals.
The third day was a heavy learning day. In the morning spent most of our time in our teaching room, and made some notes while Mr.Hughes was giving us lectures on what being “ready” means. We then critiqued each other’s SMART goals with our partners, and gave each other feed back. Right before lunch, we were each assigned a countability partner, to make sure that we are working on our goals. Amy was making sure that I was actively listening all the time, and she helped me to achieve my goal by talking to me a lot, and providing me opportunities to have conversations with her. In the afternoon, we had some time to reflect on our DI project. We had a group reunion, and discussed how we could improve. Check out my blogpost on DI! Right after that, we built our own shelters in the forest. We were put into teams of 4-6, and built our new home. We had good collaborations in our group, we had a few people building, and few collecting wood, and even two extra people to build a storage place for food. When we returned back to the resort from dinner, we had more learning to do. We made our criteria for ourselves, and critiqued ourselves based on how we did.
It was pretty late already, but the teachers hosted a Jeopardy game! Of course I had to participate. Dries, Jordan and I, formed a strong alliance, “Yuri” for the win! We ended up having a close win, and beating the best Jeopardy player, Amy. Nathan‘s team had a huge comeback on the national flags round, but team Yuri still managed to win in fine style.
On the last day, we packed up early and got ready to leave. We went on a hike, and hit the road after lunch. We spent our last afternoon at an extreme air park, sweating and enjoying ourselves. At that point, everyone was exhausted. Most of us had trouble getting good sleeps on the tiny beds. Dries and I would not use our devices after 10, and go for a walk just to ensure that we would fall asleep faster. The trip was awesome, we got to try new activities and food, but also had opportunities to grow and work on ourselves.
What I learned:
I learned that a the majority of people have goals in these three categories, habits, getting out of comfort zone, and self regulations. I prioritized a habit for this trip, I tried to be actively listening when people are speaking to me, and training my brain to process the information I hear into my own opinions. I learned methods to achieve my goal, like self critiquing, having a countability partner, and having the end in mind. If I ever want to develop myself in these three categories again, I can use the same methods I learned in this learning advance.