New Staff Training (NST) - Part II

Acronyms

In Outward Bound there are many acronyms. OB itself usually becomes an acronym. One of my favorite acronyms in DEBB, which stands for “Denial, Excused, Blame, and Bullshit.” It is a great way to call someone out when they are doing any of these four things instead of taking ownership for what they should be doing, but aren’t. “Have you ever heard the story of Debb? Well, let me tell you about her. She was always coming up with excuses for not getting things done – either she was blaming some of her co-workers, or making excuses because of circumstances, or denying that there was even a problem, or occasionally, feeding everyone a line of B.S. to get out of responsibility for something that looked bad…” From that point on, you can call someone out for “Debb-ing.” (No offense to the Debs, Debras, or Deborahs out there.) So, instead of making excuses for why I haven’t kept as up-to-date with pictures and stories as I would have liked with this blog, I will simply continue where I left off: with the second half of training.

Throughout training our group periodically switched between “student mode” and “adult mode.” We began much of our training as students – our trainers, Katie and Jinky, ran the “daily flow” much as if we were a group of teenagers at the beginning of a course. This was educational, if frustrating at times. I certainly learned what it feels like to be a student on a typical OB Discovery course – all of a sudden you find yourself in a place that is unfamiliar, under the control of elders that you largely do not know, with little personal space, time, or freedom. You are on Training.

Training, Main, and Final

Each course is divided into three main sections: Training, Main, and Final. During Training, students have very few personal and group freedoms. There is a lot to learn, and a lot to prove. To get to Main, students must demonstrate a range of both “hard” skills (such as knot tying and boat loading) and “soft” skills (such as acceptable behavior and assertive communication). Once on Main, students have more freedom, and more responsibilities. They might be able to decide what they would like to eat for dinner, but they must also demonstrate that they can set up camp and make their way through dinner as a group.

To keep things both challenging and fun, students must also pass a certain number of “Instructor Challenges” to progress to the next stage. At our second campsite during New Staff Training (NST – another one to add to the acronym list), our Instructor Challenge was to unload all of the canoes and set up camp in 45 minutes or less. In silence. At dusk. The shore was a steep muddy embankment, and canoes had to be left tied up in the water. We did it. Luckily, almost every activity in OB includes a debrief, and we needed it that night. It is interesting how struggle can show the rifts in a group that we might normally sweep beneath the radar – and how talking about that same struggle can take those rifts and turn them into strong points as people learn about each other, and about the interpersonal dynamics within the group. (Sidenote: to my understanding, this is the theory behind pretty much all we did at The Adventure Centre – create challenge and/or struggle, then talk about it.)

The last portion of any expedition is Final. In this stage of program, students are expected to “take over” their own course. While they must meet certain requirements (for example: they must run for X minutes, must properly set up camp, paddle to X campsite, etc), the structure of their days and moving from one task to the next is determined by them. Instructors do not leave, but “step back” and let students both struggle and succeed. If students do not meet expectations during any phase of course, however, they may always be “bumped back” to the previous phase.

Our transition to Final during NST came our last night on the river, and it was the most memorable part of the course…which I’m not ready to write about yet. Later.

As we moved from Training to Main to Final, we got a sense of who our instructors were, and the kind of people we had to work with on our team. I experienced the same feelings of frustration, helplessness, empowerment, encouragement, helpfulness, and self-confidence that I would imagine – or at least hope – a typical OB Discovery student would experience on course. I was working with amazing, dedicated people who shared many of my values. Over the course of ten days of close quarters in canoes and tents, I found that these amazing people had become my friends, my teachers, and my students.