Today was the Junior/Senior leadership retreat. I expected it to be kinda stupid, no offense to anybody, but I’ve been to some lame teamwork/leadership type activities before. Luckily, this retreat was not stupid at all, on the contrary, it was extraordinary. The speaker who pretty much led the entire event was Ted Wiese. He was funny, smart, entertaining, and poignant. Our first activity was Ted Says. Not Simon Says, oh no, because Simon is dead, and his name’s Ted. It went something like this: he started the match, a few people sat down, and he said “Since I’m such a nice guy, I’m gonna let you guys stand back up, and have a second chance. Why don’t we give them a nice round of applause!” Probably half the people still standing clapped (not me!) and they all had to sit down! It was about the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Me being me, I started laughing so hard that it wasn’t long before I got out, but I enjoyed the rest of the activity so much that by the time it was over, my face was literally soaked with tears (yeah, I cry when I laugh. So what.) He then had us do an activity where we all got cards and had to find our match among the rest of the group. My card read “Grace” so I naturally was looking for “Will and”. I found my match on the first try, and we did the little getting-to-know-you activity. All in all, it was a neat way to break up the preexisting social groups. After that, (and these may be in the wrong order, let me know and I’ll correct it) he did an activity in which 3 volunteers (all girls) were blindfolded and asked to eat a “live Canadian newt”, which he described as a delicacy from Canada that must be eaten live. The “newts” were in reality gummy worms soaked in water, but evidently the tactile effect was realistic enough that it felt real. The first girl screamed a little bit, but quickly accepted the dangling “newt”. The second girl screamed a lot more, and jerked her hand away several times, but she too took it. The third girl was already freaking out even before she touched the wet worm, and when it touched her hand, she basically jerked back and refused to take it (after two more attempts…). The point of this activity was that fear stops you from taking action. Although some of this sounds pretty corny, and I’m apt to take anything that’s serious as corny, I felt that Ted effectively taught leadership through these activities, something that many speakers, many of them school administrators, have failed to do in the past. The third activity was an odd one, involving all of us forming a circle and sitting down simultaneously on the knees of the person behind us. It was kinda fun, but in the 85 degree heat, it got kinda sweaty. The point of that activity was that you have to rely on others, and that one person can ruin it for everyone. Evidently, at other schools, one person would fall, causing the whole circle to fall. Not us though! The final activity before lunch was another trust-type activity where we had to lead and be led around the outdoor pavilion-type area by our partners (from the getting-to-know-you activity) with our eyes closed. It made me pretty nervous, but my partner did a great job, and I only ran into one thing. It was interesting, spending about 6 minutes walking around without seeing anything. Unfortunately, without my partner’s guidance, I would’ve most likely drowned in the creek or been hit by a car. Long story short, I’d make a terrible blind person. Lunch was catered by Edward’s Catering (delicious, but the exact same food we had at the marching band competition they catered, chicken and fries) and after people started to get done a DJ started playing dance music. I’m obviously not a fan (see post below) but it was entertaining to watch probably 70 people dance these group dances. I couldn’t learn that if I tried… I have that kind of affinity for music, but not for dance. Afterwards, we did an activity kinda like musical chairs, in which he would yell a number and we had two seconds to assemble ourselves into groups of that number. I got out pretty quickly due to some bad luck, but some people were really tenacious, and hung on for about twenty minutes before he stopped them. The point of that one was that it feels good to be in a group and bad to be excluded/kicked out. The final activity was one involving 4 stages of leadership/membership, where the first was an egg (you had to kneel down and act like an egg “imaneggimaneggimanegg”), the second was a chicken (wings flapping) the third was, oddly, a dinosaur, and the third was a leader (who just had to act cool). The way you progressed was by winning 2/3 matches of paper, rock, scissors. If you won, you advanced to the next stage, and if you lost, you regressed all the way to egg. Unless, that is, you were a leader. It was apparent (to some) from the start that once someone became a “leader” they should just let people beat them, since leaders couldn’t regress. The first time when he stopped us, there were a few eggs, some chickens, and some dinosaurs. After he let everyone else in on the strategy, there were only leaders at the end. I think. He summed everything up, and then the school administrators gave some short speeches, and we had ice cream and a raffle for lanyards and T-shirts and other things. On top of all that fun, I got to go home at 2:35 instead of 2:50! It was a great retreat, and Ted was an awesome speaker. Kudos. Geez, who says “kudos”… What’s wrong with me? (don’t answer that.)

EDIT: Thanks for that comment.  I forgot two things!  *smacks forehead*  There was a hoola hoop demonstration where like 6 people held a hoola hoop on top of their outstretched arms and fingers and tried to lower it to the ground.  The rules were that their fingers had to keep constant contact with the hoola hoop, and their fingers and arms had to stay parallel to the ground.  When he let go of the hoola hoop, it slowly rose up into the air.   This occurred both times he let go.  This was evidently due to the fact that in order to maintain constant contact with the hoop, each person had to apply a slight amount of upward pressure.  All 6 people doing this created a domino-like effect where the hula hoop just flew up into the air.  The point was that what you do affects everybody else?  Maybe?  This was yesterday, so I forgot of course…  The second thing I forgot was the Family Feud thing where we split up into groups of six and basically played Family Feud, guessing the most popular responses to questions, including most popular cartoon dog, food with a nationality in the title, etc.  This one was about team work I think.  Lol.
Thanks for the comment