Parkdale Secondary College Year 12 Camp Blog

As the buses rumbled to a stop at the gates of The Summit, a wave of excitement developed among the year 12 students of Parkdale Secondary College. What a massive 3 days planned full of excitement and nervousness that would push you physically and mentally. Day 1 started by meeting your 15 coaches who guided you through your camp experience. Your coaches were Logan, Odile, Sara, Aron, Sam, Spinks, Calarnee, Liam, Sunny, Luke, Matt, Ant, Timmay, Jakob and Mim. You also became familiar with our Five Keys and if we used them would make camp go from good to GREAT!

The Five Keys were:

1. Have Fun

2. Play All In

3. Make Lots of Mistakes

4. Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

5. Don’t Go Home Wondering What If

Next, the goal-setting strategy that would help us get the most out of our activities. When we got to an activity that made us nervous, it would help us face those fears to the best of our ability.

The 3 goals are as follows:

TARGET: Something you know you can do. (Not nervous at all)

STRETCH: Something you think you can do but are not 100% sure. (Nerves setting in)

SUPER-STRETCH: Something you think would be impossible for you to do. (Really nervous)

With no further ado, we played a big game of ‘50 Up’, we then split up into our tribes and began our first 2 activities. Your activities throughout your time here at The Summit included:

The Cave, moving through an epic small underground tunnel with no light to give hope and no sounds to comfort, challenging our fear of the unknown, and realizing the difference between perception and reality.

Abseil, feeling like the main character of Mission Impossible, challenges our ability to trust in ourselves.

Snake and Nails, walking over hundreds of nails with bare feet right before coming face to face with one of the world's most feared animals, a snake!

Sky Bridge, traversing across the lake on nothing but a bridge, using every bit of concentration and focus on your technique, only to realize that it is usually our belief that determines if we successfully make it across. Great work everyone on conquering the bridge and moving forward within the struggle!

Trust Games, challenging our level of trust within ourselves and our team through engaging in a variety of epic physical trust exercises.

Bush Challenge, racing through as a team completing obstacles, and testing your physical and mental skills.

Highwire, scaling a tree to then balance across a thin wire with your partner and come down together like a boss.

Leap of Faith, challenging our ability to trust not only ourselves but the entire process, and to take a leap into the unknown regardless of what was holding us back.

Inflatables, breaking up some of the action with more action focusing on just having fun!

Rock Wall, is the ultimate challenge of physical and mental strength, testing your will to keep climbing up through fear.

Snowy River challenge, the ultimate test of teamwork and support involving a race through 5 obstacles as fast as possible to beat the opposing team's time.

Laser Tag, dodging and weaving through our laser war zone striving to eliminate the opposition.

Summit Window, climbing up an 18-meter tower and scaling a ladder, sometimes when you push through your fear you will experience an incredible sense of freedom! Letting go was the key. Everyone did an amazing job!

Giant Swing, testing what it will take to let go of our fear and trust the process, letting go of “what if…”.

Day 2 was already here! Starting the morning off with breakfast followed by Logan talking to us all about how you want our day to go and making a deliberate choice. Logan asked us about who we wanted to be for the day (supportive, brave, funny, leaders) and to make a choice before we got down into the park. “You don’t attract what you want, you attract what you are”.

Next, we continued with 3 more activities for the morning. What an action-packed morning we had planned for you. However, it wasn’t over yet! After a delicious lunch to fuel us for the afternoon, we finished the day with one last activity. Finally, we were about to begin the epic journey that would push you physically and mentally. The moment we had only heard rumors about it, it was time for the Monster Course! Running in our teams through a mud run obstacle course linked together by hand to achieve not only the best time but also a closer connection to our fellow peers and teammates. After the first lap we followed it up with a surprise, we told you we were going to do it twice! What a sight to see. Pushing ourselves to limits we hadn’t reached before. Congratulations to all those who truly pushed through and demonstrated to themselves a new level of resilience.

Day 3 was already on the horizon! We began with some breakfast followed by a gratitude session with Logan. This encouraged us to use gratitude as a tool to instantly FEEL joy and happiness when reflecting on the often unappreciated things we have in life. “Gratitude affects your attitude and in turn, affects your altitude”. We then commence our last 3 activities. What an epic way to finish off an incredible camp. Finally, each team voted for somebody in their group who best demonstrated our Five Keys. Congrats to your teams’ values winners, you are all epic individuals. Lastly, we all got the chance to witness our WW2 army tank go for a lap around our mud track. However, your well-deserving values winners got to have a first-class seat inside the tank as it went to work!

Thank you, Parkdale Secondary College, for playing all in and rocking it throughout camp.

Keep Unleashing Your Greatness!