School Celebration Newesletter Sept to July 2016 LR

A Duke of Edinburgh Experience
T
he DofE practise and expedition was without
doubt the most challenging criteria of the
award. I think it would be safe to say
absolutely nobody could have anticipated what we
signed up for:
C
rumpling beneath a rucksack that was a
quarter of our own weight, weight-busters
became a standard; water was now
sacred; unknowing encounters with electric fences
followed shortly by ear-piercing
The Duke of
Edinburgh
Award
2016
shrieks; the heart-drop of realising
you’d been dragging yourself 5 km off
route; abstract speculations being the
thin thread of distraction keeping
everyone stumbling along; slugs
warming up to your tent; the muddy
ground somehow drawing everybody
to fall for it; routine exasperated sighs,
unavoidable leg-deep cow faeces,
and to top it off, a bucket full of tears as the only
coping mechanism available for many.
H
owever, the struggles were felt and shared
by everyone, which gave the experience
an inexplicable authentic sense of
enjoyment and achievement you wouldn’t be able
to gain from anything else.
By Lina Tumi Y10