How do the choices we make set us on our future path? This is the question my classmates and I set out to find the answer to on our week-long trip to Loon Lake in Maple Ridge, led by Pinnacle Pursuits. Before I tell you what I think the answer is, let’s look into the big idea and the competencies we were also learning about on this trip and how I showed my learning in all of them… Little Mermaid Edition because I lost my voice and couldn’t speak for the whole trip.
The big idea of the trip was from careers “ Our future paths reflect the personal, community and educational choices we make. I think a lot about this on my own almost daily. How are the decisions I’m making now impacting my future? On this trip, I thought of this a different way though. I normally think of this in quite an academic way (what courses to take what grades I should get etc..). This trip made me look at the bigger picture, instead of just me, how are my actions impacting the people around me? I didn’t think about this in one specific moment but rather the whole trip. My classmates (my community) are the people I am more or less stuck with for the rest of high school and we have to be a team if any of us wants to succeed whatever that means to each person. All of us have to CHOOSE to be a team instead of a group. My voice being gone didn’t affect this for me too much.
Processing
“ I can think critically, creatively and reflectively with a variety of strategies to process ideas and further my understanding.” I’m really strong with this competency. I have grown a lot within the time I have spent in PLP. That said, it is hard to use a bunch of strategies when you are in the same setting overlay, the classroom. There are so many ways we can think and some work better outside. That’s why it was so great that we worked outside for so much of this project. 2 I want to highlight are the low ropes course and the scavenger hunt activity.
In low ropes, we worked in groups (the beavers are the BEST!) To overcome a variety of obstacles. One was a kind of loop where everyone needed a spotter to go through it. Everyone had to go through it eventually. This was one of the last activities so we were already more bonded as a team. We had to think creatively; in ways we hadn’t before to make sure everyone had a spotter and everyone got through in the shortest amount of time. Guess what? It worked. We beat our first time by a full minute and got the fastest time Brandon (super cool dude from Pinnacle Pursuits) had ever seen.
In the scavenger hunt, we worked in groups of four to find locations and solve puzzles at these locations. There we so many of these and I learned at all of the stations but I think the best example of this was the water station. At this station, we had to transfer freezing water in pipes (with no bottom we had to block them with our hands, and once we had water we couldn’t move). Since we were the first team we had to come up with a strategy. It seemed like an impossible task. One of my group members came up with a strategy that helped us complete the activity. I never would have thought of this myself.
Losing my voice affected this activity. I couldn’t talk at all so I had to find other ways to communicate which was hard. I’m used to taking a leadership role in these activities but I could and though I was frustrated in the moment, after reflecting on it I’m glad it happened the way it did because I got to experience the activity in a completely different way. This activity mostly impacted my reflective processing.
Analyzing
“ I can identify analyze and represent supportable conclusions having evaluated relevance authenticity and bias.” I think this one is really about thinking things through and not jumping to conclusions, keeping an open mind. This I focused on at the start of the trip, trying to leave whatever biases I had in my mind. I didn’t know what was sign to happen at Loon Lake and it was really hard not to go into this experience with a negative mindset because I am a naturally cautious person and I haven’t always had the most positive experiences with some of the people in my grade. I’m so glad I did look at the positives on this trip though for many reasons: I became much closer and more trusting of my classmates after emotionally open activities, trying new things like the high ropes course made me feel brave, learning new things with Jono from pinnacle Pursuits, and since I got sick and wants all to be there the first day, since I was positive I didn’t let that ruin the experience for me. I also didn’t let not having a voice get in my way, instead looking at the bigger picture and how I could grow from that.
Decision making
“ I can evaluate ethical implications and make complex judgements while identifying and respecting diverse communities” I feel that this topic is best represented by the crossing the line activity we did as a class. To protect the privacy of myself and my classmates I will be speaking in very broad terms. In this activity, we sat in silence on one side of the gym together. There were two ropes across the gym and we were asked to walk across the room if we related to a statement said Jono who sat in a chair on the side in between the two ropes. After everyone had crossed were were asked to look at who was and wasn’t with us and think about how that made us feel. At the start, the statements were pretty surface level but they got more and more intense and fewer and fewer people were crossing. During some statements, only one person walked across. Many of us were in tears by the end of the activity. After we sat in a circle and were asked how we felt and to ask each other questions I am so proud of my classmates and their bravery, sharing their personal sorties. I learned how empathic a lot of my classmates are. By the end of this activity and the discussion many of us were crying and hugging each other. though this activity hurt I am so glad we did it. It was probably the most important thing we did on this trip.
Something we learned from Jono in the group sessions we did was the difference between a group and a team. A group is just a bunch of different people with different motives and personal opinions and while a team still has that they also share an end goal and work together fairly to complete it. By the end of this activity, I felt we had become a TEAM.
This activity is also what made me decide on my transfer goal, goals we all made at the end of the trip to ensure the team building we did didn’t go to waste. After this activity, I had a newfound compassion for my classmates. I am often quick to judge and once I have an opinion of someone it usually sticks. After this activity though I felt that my opinion had changed about a lot of the people on my learning team. My transfer goal was to “Keep an open mind when working with and interacting with my classmates because you never know what’s going on.”
This leads me to the answer to the question. The choices we make are always impacting our futures in more ways than we can imagine. The Best way we can set ourselves up for success is to be aware of the way we impact others. 85% of what distinguishes star performers comes from emotional intelligence so we need to focus on this for a good future.
Overall I think that Loon Lake was a big success for all of us. None of us could have expected everything that happened and it was great that it happened that way. I truly feel that we have transformed into more understanding and emotionally intelligent people. Thank you so much to our teachers and parents for supporting this trip,
Neko ✮