i think i did ok

In October of 2003, I made a decision to pursue an alternative attitude towards education when I met a man named Steve Goril. He was standing behind a table in front of our student center at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and when I stopped at the beckoning of my curiosity, he handed me a beautifully photographed catalog. The cover was stamped with N O L S, National Outdoor Leadership School, and its contents prophetically displayed the path that would lay down the next five years of my young adult life.

A family friend and avid outdoorsman, Mark Rowland, said to me in an e-mail, “You will realize, perhaps only to the fullest extent when you return to the norm, the realness of it all. The experience is raw and like nothing else.” Period.

I traveled 12,000 miles to Broome, Australia where I stripped away and strapped on the bare essentials. I spent the next 68 days learning to travel by canoe and foot with a group of eleven strangers from all over the United Sates, whom, for various reasons, chose to submerge themselves in one of the most awesome and unforgiving environments in the entire world.

Mark was right. I realized it then and I continued to realize it when I quit taking classes at Miami. He was right when I began picking up applications to outdoor education camps. He was right when I applied to Southern Illinois University and I felt right, for the first time in my college career, when I stepped into my future as specialist in Outdoor Recreation.

There is a lot for me to yet to learn about this field, but with the confidence and pride that I gained from my experience with NOLS, I feel I can begin to set some short and long-term goals for myself.

In time, I wish to become a backcountry expedition leader with a focus in psychological therapy. I believe that by removing people from their everyday environment and harnessing the basic necessities of human life, people can look more intently into themselves and truly discover positive and powerful things that they often fail to see. I believe that by teaching leadership and self-sustainability while interacting closely with a group, people gain confidence and trust themselves to open up to the world around them. The ecology of the natural setting is in many ways a wonderful and creative tool for communicating the importance of each individual in a team.

In order to harness this dream as a reality, I need exactly what I gained from NOLS: experience. I am an emotionally intelligent person with a fair amount of experience dealing with psychological obstructions. I am flexible, honest, open minded and patient. When judging my own personality, I feel I could do a tremendous job in this field. What I need to strengthen, however, are my outdoor skills. I received the caviar of outdoor education with NOLS, but practice, as always, makes perfect. I am determined to gain as much experience in the field through internships or personally planned expeditions with peers. I believe that integrating myself with a smaller scale organization that programs towards children with behavioral disorders would be a good challenge to see how even my strengths are tested. I need to gain a real perspective on the population I wish to work with to ensure myself that the direction I want to take with outdoor recreation will be far more than just a walk in the park.