Building Bonds and Empowering Growth at Loon Lake Advance

Hello, and welcome to my Loon Lake Field Study reflection. 

When my class and I traveled to Loon Lake, the goal of our trip was to get to know each other better and build stronger bonds. We explored how the choices we make set our future path.  

Before embarking on this journey we were given very little information about our Loon Lake trip. Still, I was excited to participate in the events to come.  I can see now I had lots of questions about the week and hoped to take a lot of photos. 

During the trip we were very busy and it seemed like organized chaos. The first few days were focused on introductions with our instructors and getting to know each other better.  We played some ‘ice-breaker’ games and talked about the activities that were planned. My favourite things were archery, climbing, high ropes and low ropes, and trust falls.  During trust falls, I was dropped from four feet in the air into the arms of my peers. it was very nerve racking to depend on others to protect me from a fall, but it also made me feel exhilarated and improved my faith in my peers.  After every activity we would debrief and then journal about how we felt. At the end of the week we set Transfer Goals, I had two transfer goals.  

One is to explore social interactions with  groups  I normally feel I wouldn’t have similar interests with.  The other goals is to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable with new activities or social groups.

I felt my week at Loon Lake was exciting and offered me opportunities to learn. The big take away for me is how I became more socially aware of others.  I got to know my peers better and understand them with more empathy.  I also learned a lot about clear communication.  I understand now that communication is more than  speaking. It’s listening and responding with thought and intent. Reacting and responding signal very different things. I’ll need to be more careful about how I respond and react to those I’m talking with. We also looked at leadership skills by using a scale  from 1 to 5 to  identify our styles. My ratings showed I’m a Challenger and Encourager. I agree with this  because I enjoy encouraging others and like challenging myself. Last, I learned emotional intelligence is about understanding my own emotions and also the emotions of others.  It involves self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. 

So how do the choices we make set our future path?  I learned the choices we make can affect other people both negatively and positively.  We have the power to control what we say and what we do. Others around us form an opinion based on their perspective of our choices. If our choices affect them positively, then they will respond to us in a positive manner, which can positively affect our future path.