Jeana Bevan at Outward Bound

At Outward Bound they always say, “There is more in you”, which I agree with after pushing myself to my limits by trying new activities.  I went on a two-day hike and walked around 30km on the Queen Charlotte track then sailed and rowed for 2 days back to Anakiwa.  We also went coasteering (an adventurous activity that combines climbing, swimming, and jumping along a rocky coastline) for a day and did a lot of cliff jumping. During the hike, we had to go downhill off-track which was challenging but I had the support of my watch house. 

My watch house is another good thing that came from Outward Bound, we learned how to work together in stressful and unfamiliar situations, and we also formed strong connections with each other. Our kaiako (leaders) taught us to trust and open up to each other which made the watchhouse closer, we still keep in contact now.

One of my favourite sayings was, “The hard easy”.  The hard easy is when you do something hard so that you will have an easier time in the future, for example, when my watch house was on the sailboat we had the option to knot a tarp onto the mast and create a shelter for us to sleep under. Most of us were tired from hiking earlier in the day and from learning to sail. It was also late at night and cold so everyone wanted to get warm and sleep. We knew it was going to be very dewy in the morning which would mean we would wake up wet and cold which would ruin the start of our day. As a group, we decided to persevere through the cold and do the hard easy and put the tarp up to make sure we weren’t tired in the morning.

Thanks to Outward Bound, I find myself using the hard easy more often in my day-to-day life.

Jeana Bevan, Year 12