Before Christmas last year, I went on a 21 day Mind Body and Soul course with Outward Bound. One of the conditions when participating on Outward Bound is living without cell phones. The only contact we were allowed was to send a letter to family as the whole theme was just living ‘in the moment’ with your ‘watch mates’, these were the other people assigned to my group.

I have always wanted to push myself, but I didn’t know how, so when I got the opportunity to go on an Outward Bound course, I took it because I wanted to have an experience where you had to push yourself and that was the best thing I have ever done. As well as not going on my phone, which after a couple of days I forgot about.

The highlight for me was sailing. The group and I had to decide where we were going to sail, and how long to sail each day. We experienced a range of weather conditions during our three days of sailing. The first day was the best because the sun was shining so we all had a sleep and barely did any work. The second day was terrible, it was cold and raining, and we were all tired because we had to sleep on the ‘cutter’. The cutter was uncomfortable, but we got to experience seeing the dolphins which was the best thing that happened, and brightened everyone's day. On the last day everyone was getting intolerant with each other and had enough of being cold and miserable, and we wanted our beds. We were so mad because we all knew we had to jump off the wharf in the pouring rain when we got back! We always had to jump from the wharf after a scheme, or an activity.

Outward Bound taught me so much, they really got me out of my comfort zone and to always be ‘in the moment’, and not to worry about what I was going to do every day. Whilst being on the course they never told us what we were doing, we had to guess what we should wear by looking at our instructors at PT or breakfast time to work out what we were going to do. One thing that has stuck in my mind since the participation on Outward Bound is a saying they always used, “Mā te wā”. So many good things happened and I could go on and on about the course, but these were a few things that I chose from. I highly recommend any Year 12 students considering Outward Bound, to take on the challenge, be brave and just do it!

Here’s a link to check them out. https://www.outwardbound.co.nz/

Thank you to the Otago Community Trust for funding the scholarship, and to Miss Young, who is the teacher coordinator, for making these opportunities available to students at our school.