Personally, it was amazing how the trip turned out. I was kinda dreading the course cos I remember the last time when I was on overseas experiential learning course (that's a nice way of putting it - the real deal was unexpectedly harsher than what we had been prepared for then). I guess as you get too comfortable over time in the urban setting, the outdoors seems a bit ..like..wild?? Moreover, I was a bit sceptical if I can survive the group dynamics..again..getting too comfortable with people already known and worked with.. bleh. On another front, I knew my own objectives for this course as well as the trip (as shared during our very first facilitated discussion in Bintan), given how situation was turning out back at work prior to the start of the course.
But anyway, it was better to do that, than to sit in class and go through lectures after lectures on leadership (hey...that sounded kinda familiar, heck, it happened in bintan as well.Haha~), I thought, and it's good to get those limbs working.
So..I cant say that my moral was very high on the first day cos it was damn early waking up and getting out of the house by 645am, and it was pouring cats and dogs when we reached our destination (which continued its form for the next 3 days as well, until the day when we left when it decided to turn bright and sunny =.="). Thereafter, things took its own course, and somehow it got way much better, especially with the post-activities gatherings at night - that was when the real bonding started :p Almost everybody shedded their "work" fronts and laughed, joked, teased, chatted, shared experiences and thoughts. It was encouraging especially when after a few days, a colleague was comfortable enough to share his thoughts on me, asking me why I was holding back during this trip, knowing that I'm out of character. It was insightful of what he told me, which I think would not had happened if it wasn't that we had been hanging out for the past few nights.
My group was somewhat the super (under-)achiever in all the planned activities front, but it just turned out that our group was prob the only one that was laughing most of the time - despite being chidded for not putting "heart and soul" in our work, lectures on leadership, malfunctioning contraption..I was just telling someone that there seemed to be a lot of "alphas" in my group, but during the 5 days, I discovered that instead of being "alphas", we were more like individuals knew when to hold back and support the designated leader in his/her learning processes, whether if the decisions made were right or wrong. Well, I dont know it was the right attitude towards what we were supposed to go through, but somehow I felt that that had helped foster a sense of trust and respect, which was evident in the last day when instead of writing comments on one another's possible area of improvment and slipping the notes to the respective persons, my group decided to go against the norm (again) to just share and tell how they feel, to one another's face.
The super-underachieving Group 3
Looking back, in my heart, I thank whoever is up there, who had probably understood what I needed, and the trip had really perked me up since a long time I remembered, beyond my expectations. Now..there is still something left unsettled..cross fingers!
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