School Camp!

Lets talk about winning, losing and my school camp today.

Yesterday , I came back from my school’s camp. These few days were filled with dancing, singing, new experiences, wins, losses ,games, crazy late night fun, swimming, travel, dress up, oration, great food, a beautiful location, life lessons and so much more. Today, though we’re only talking about a few of the many things that I did and that happened over the course of these days that have actually changed me, some way or the other.

Over the course of the camp, I’ve learnt to be thankful, to tell people when I find something about them good, talk to various kinds of people, gained significant insight into my own gender(This is an achievement for a girl who has been borderline tomboyish all her life), sang solo for the first time(It went disastrously and I was practically shaking because it was suddenly sprung on me but made a good experience nonetheless),won a few prizes, lost some competitions, won a major prize(Which I’ll talk about in detail for the rest of the post) and made so many new friends and acquaintances.(From my own school and others)

The aforementioned major prize was won in what has been a tradition in the school, something called a ‘Personality Pageant.’ It is a contest with many rounds including but not limited to, the first interview, an introduction round where you do a catwalk and can feel all model-like and  then introduce yourself to the judges and answer one common question, a talent round(Where I did a little impromptu jig) and a long gruelling one-on-one question answer round.

In the introduction round, our question was ” Where do you see yourself in the next 5-7 years and what have you done about it? “My answer was about how much I love writing, expressing myself, doing creative things and want to see myself somewhere in that field and as to what I’ve done for it, I talked about this blog. In my Q and A round I was mostly asked about the blog and writing and my round was (Or maybe so I felt) the longest. I’ve always been a whimsical(Aha!) person, so I was honest and quick and  would say what I actually wanted to say in all my answers with a smile and the judges actually stopped questioning me in between and had a 2 minute discussion before speaking with me again. They seemed quite happy and told me how glad they were to see how passionate I was about what I did and  even told me they look forward to my next blog post.

In the end, I was runner’s up among 800 girls from 12 schools. I won a lot of prizes for this,  one for a improv prop dance I’d done before, group prizes for the school and the overall Champions prize at the camp.(Yes, we did dance on the Champion song afterwards.) I was stunned to find that in all honesty, I was beyond elated at winning and didn’t care that I’d lost to one person, or lost any other competition(Like the solo singing) for the matter. I was happy, I had learnt a lot and the pageant was, for obvious reasons, my favourite part of the camp.

The trophy!

I got a wonderful batch of memories to take home, life lessons and experiences the like of which I’ll probably never have again.Who, in the right mind would call this losing? What, to one person? What is one prize extra compared to all that I’ve gained?This is winning in its best form, winning at making the best of the life we’ve got and living it to the fullest. And that, all it takes to be a winner is for you to feel like one, is the best lesson I’ve learnt at camp.