Monday fieldtrip 20.01.2020

Our Topic of the day was : Groupdynamic.

After a long walk, we finally arrived the fireplace at the University, where we got our first task. Create a camp with a tarp, a fire place and seating places in 20 minutes. So we grapped a tarp, two ropes, a knive and started quickly to find a good place to set our camp.

The first problem our Group realised was, that we dont really got an instruction, what kind of camp we should create. Should it be for a short rest, should it be for an overnight stay, should it be tonight (no rain) or should it also protect us from rain. So we decided as a group, that we want to set a camp for a short lunch break, that provides seating area for everybody and a windsave, warm place.

We started to build up three teams. four people created the tarp, three the seating and two the fire place. Because I was impressed by every team in our group I want to explain the Prozess of every team seperatly.

• The Tarp: because the norwegians got told they should be more inactive in this task because they already did exactly this excercise before and are more experienced in it, we made the decition that the internationals should build this Team. Haron leaded this group and together they buildet this amazing, really tensioned tarp which was perfect to provide us a windsave camp. They used sticks to create a, kind of busstation formed , tent which started right from the ground so no wind could come threw the back.
•  The Fireplace: This was my absolute favorite part of our camp. Two members of our team collected big and smal rocks to create this amazing Fireplace. They used the big rocks to form a reflectionwall of the warmth and the smal stones as a basement of the fire. this provides the best heat storage and adsorpion to our seating area. in the same time it is enviromental friendly because we can remove the stones and the underground doesn´t get too much attacked.
• The seating area: As a seating for all of us we decided to create benches because we had a lot of wood around our place. we took shorter sticks to build up a basement to put some longer branches to form the seats. We created two of those benches which were quite comfortable espetially because of their height.

After we finished everything right in time we looked at each others results. I found it quite interesting how diffrent everybody solved the task. I mean, that was mostly caused of the broadly based task. Because of the strong differences a competition was build. everybody tried to find excuses for their faults of building. But as a result this pushed the teamspirit in all the other groups.

After we finished the round we had another 15 minutes to improve our camps. Our biggest critique was, that our tarp wasn´t rainresistant. so the only thing we did was to lower our tarp and created a tent. then we moved the benches under it and had an amazing, comfortable, rainresistant and warm place to stay. The only big problem that we experienced was that our tarp teared at the loops. but for that we didn´t really got a good solution.

after all, our group haven´t won the game but I think I learned a lot and the group dynamic in our group was amazing. we´ve been really productive and saw our potential but the winning aspect wasn´t that important in our team. I really appressiated that a lot.

After the lunch we got our last task to build a tower with all the stuff we had in our bags. First we just tried to be fast and used evrything we had but then somebody came up with a really good idea. Because one group member was not really believing in this idea, this person just stop articipating. The rest trieded to build up a really funktional tower with almost just our drinkingbottles. in the end we were not the lowest tower and the person that got out of the group was also really impressed. I hope this Person learned a lot out of this last task that there are a lot of ways to get to your aim and that it is a group decition that we are deciding and that means that sometimes you have to take a step back and give somebody else the leader position, because we are just humans and all of us can fail sometimes. And there are a lot of ways to get to your aim and thinking diffrent is sometimes a really good way to get to your aim or even be better then the others.

From this Monday fieldtrip, I learned a lot about techniques, how to build a tarp-tent and the most important thing, that you have to decide for what kind of situation you want to build it. I learned a lot from the norwegains and loved the way they just stepped back, but in the same time gave us amazing hints or knowledge when we did something wrong or just didn´t knew it better. I really enjoyed our teamspirit, because all of us where really entusiastic and creative and had the aim to create this perfect camp customized on our wishes. I think in the end of the day every single Person of our goup got new ideas and learned something About creating a camp and acting in a group.

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”  -Henry Ford