Adele, Classic course 18-26 years
My Dad is a Kiwi but I grew up in Hong Kong, and did secondary school in Auckland. At the end of my Melbourne University degree last November, I did Outward Bound mainly because my mates raved on and on and on about it, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Also, it was a good excuse for a trip home. The easy option is to tell you straight out, DO OUTWARD BOUND. But the best option is to ask you three questions and share how Outward Bound helped me answer my own. First of all, who are you? If I asked your parents, or mates, who you were, they would be able to answer. But their answers would not be as accurate as your own. As you get older, you realise that nobody really knows anyone else. Even if you and your best friend think you know everything about each other, from her love of pineapple pizza to that completely embarrassing conversation she had with her crush, there will always be hidden parts of another person's identity that you cannot see.
The only person you can ever really know is yourself. Only you have witnessed all your experiences, your memories, your hopes and dreams. Only you know what's important to you. Outward Bound encourages you to not only find out who you truly are, but to celebrate being that person! Why? Because, as I learned from my sociology classes at uni, your identity is the vehicle of all your life experiences. You only get one shot at life, but if you do it right, then one shot is enough. In this room there are people who cannot only change NZ but who can change the world. But to first be able to change anyone else, we must first change ourselves. We must become the best person we can possibly be before we even think to try and influence others. Sometimes you need to get away from the people who think they know you well, in order to remember who you truly are, and OB encourages you to take off your social mask. At OB, you lose yourself in nature, in a new group of people, sometimes in silence, and in return, everyone leaves OB having found a stronger sense of self. A strong sense of self allows you to answer my next question. There are two parts: what do you want to do with your life, and what are you going to do? Before Outward Bound, I was loving the social aspect of the uni halls of residence; I was going to do a postgraduate course and was very involved in campus life. I was like, I don't need to change a thing! But Outward Bound reminded me that I am crazy in love with the Kiwi lifestyle, and, at the end of the day, I will always end up back here. So I moved back, and it was worth giving up all those plans I had, because what I get from NZ can never be found in Australia.
The thing is, sometimes you're going so fast that you forget to check whether you're heading where you want to end up. Outward Bound gave me time to think not only about where I wanted to live after graduation, but about which career I want. I always knew which career my parents wanted for me, which career my friends thought would suit me, which career my teachers predicted for me, but being away from all of them helped me realise how little I'd been thinking about which career I wanted for myself. Nobody can predict their future destination, but everyone can control their direction. You need to know what you want the future to look like before you can make it happen. If you don't have a target, how can you know when you hit it? How can you recognise your best possible life if you have not yet defined it?
Outward Bound is only three and a half weeks of being disconnected from the world, but you become connected to a new group of mates, inspiring instructors, the planet, and to the person you are outside of your usual environment. The friends you make are incredible because shared experience is the glue of friendship and… you share some pretty once-in-a-lifetime memories. Which brings me to my next question. How will you make life better for other people? Outward Bound is about teamwork and service. You are already performing a service, because you're here to learn about leadership. Even if some of you are here just to get out of class, you've been exposed to some powerful info today, info that prepares you for better leadership. The heart of great leadership is the initiative to serve others. Each of you will leave a mark on the world, whether you admit it or not. It's up to you what that mark will be. It's not about how big the mark is, it's about how positive mark is. The only way to feel like you matter is to find a way to matter to other people. Service is about giving, it's making life better for others, so that you make the most out of your life. Outward Bound teaches you that life is not a dress rehearsal, and through that you learn the difference between what you want and what you need, which is often such a hard distinction to make. Often you want the easy option, when what you need is the best option. Some friends hassled me massively before Outward Bound. They thought it was being dropped in the middle of the bush with maybe a carrot and a compass. But Outward Bound is not boot camp – obviously, the fitter you are, the more you enjoy it – but it is for anyone who can run 3km in under 25 minutes. The easy option is to leave today with a lot of buzzy thoughts. Dreams only take you so far though, and Outward Bound is an action you can begin today. You can commit to saving money, or to approaching possible sponsors, today. If you're capable of dreaming about it, you're capable of doing it.
Think about those questions: who are you? What will you do with your life? How will you serve others? If you're interested in answers, I recommend what I see as the best option – Outward Bound – because you may have guessed the life-changing lesson I took away from it: The easy option is not always the best option.
