The selection course a.k.a 5 stressful but fun days

The selection course was two things; Stressful & Fun.

Day 1

Once we had arrived on the island, we were approached by mini vans. One to carry our luggage the other to carry people. Like boy scouts desperate to prove their worth to the PT team, people were already volunteering to carry all the luggage into the vans. I however, one of the last out of the boat and leisurely taking in the stunning scenery realised I had not volunteered to do anything. Also desperate to portray an outgoing and hands on image I felt I had failed the first test but I put it behind me as I knew there would be many other opportunities to "show off". We piled into the buses and took a bumpy ride to PT's Centre. Upon arrival, we listened to a talk from Allison Fraser. She essentially told us the history of PT and how respected it is. It was a stern but motivational talk.

Then we each had to have our photo taken for our individual files. I was not very happy about that. Having not washed my hair or managed to get all the glitter off my face I basically looked like a wreck!

Then we were told which houses we would be living in for the duration of the course and who we would be sharing them with. I was staying with Allison Fraser along with two other girls (one of which I had met on the boat) I was a little nervous as I knew I needed to be on my best behaviour 24/7.

Then were placed into team groups which we would undertake tasks with. For each task it was important to try to figure out PT's thinking. To do this I came up with my own questions to answer; 1. "Is this tasks testing whether I am good with interacting with the people around me?" 2. "Is this task testing whether I can be a team leader?" 3. "Is this task testing my intellect?" 4. "Is it testing my creativity?".

I also realised that this was the perfect opportunity to figure out the personalities of the people in my group. Most were easy to work with, others more challenging.

The first task ticked questions 1, 2 and 3.

For it we were asked to create a structure out of straws and pins which at the end could hold up a dictionary.

The task was hard. To cut a long story short no team succeeded.

After that we were sent to our hosts homes.

Allison Fraser's home - Description

Large

Split into two halves - One for Project Trust volunteers such as myself and one for her and her husband

Very posh

Large telly

Very nice newly hoovered carpets

After admiring her house she took us to our rooms where we were able to freshen up before dinner.

Dinner was amazing Pie, chips and peas followed by Victoria sponge.

Day 2

Having had a most wonderful sleep in a double bed and black out curtains, getting up seemed to be the most unatural thing I had ever done. But with Allison having been very strict on being "down for breakfast in time" I was in no way going to risk a lie in.

Got up,

undid my plattes

did my make up

got dressed

headed next door to find my house mates

with them looking just as sleepy as I we trudged downstairs into the kitchen. The table had not been done up and breakfast was only just starting to be cooked by Mr Fraser. One look at each other and we knew it was a race to see who could offer to help the most. The PT second day job interview had begun.

Carrying not only cutlery but also glasses I laid the table, Phoebe brought in the juice and bowls while Abby carried the pot of porridge and jam. With nothing else to put on the table we stood awkwardly behind our chairs feeling as though we should be doing more. Thinking deeply I realised that I had not yet interacted much with Mr Fraser. Chuffed with my brain wave I scurried into the kitchen to strike up a conversation with him. It started with, "Hello Mr Fraser, do you know where Allison is?" he replied with out looking directly at me and we got chatting. As far as first conversations go it went pretty well. Not long after Allison joined me in the kitchen and we all moved into the dining room.

By this stage I was very hungry and certainly by the sound of Phoebe's stomach I was not the only one. Porridge was divided out and we all modestly placed a small tea spoon of jam on to the top before diving in.

This was my first mistake of the day. If, like I last July, you do not know that the Scottish have salty porridge ... then this is your official warning.

Shocked and rather hurt by the notion of it, I quickly swallowed. I looked up to find Phoebe and Abby increasing their quantity of jam quite considerably and exchanging a similar look of shock. However, I not wanting to seem uncultured or rude, kept the same level of jam on mine and continued to swallow it down. To be fair by the end of it I was used to it and in fact almost enjoyed it.

Anyway, breakfast was finished, we did the washing up and tidied things away before doing our teeth and bundling back into one of the mini vans to go to the PT centre.

(To be quite honest I can not remember everything that occurred each day so I will have to write it as if I am writing the highlights.)

So after, i'm sure a few talks about the countries that we could be sent to and maybe a team building exercise we were all moved into the main room. From there Allison Fraser told us to create a circle and take a seat. She stood in the middle and started to talk about TEFL. From here we had our first lesson on how to be a good teacher. We discussed all the bad things that teachers do and then all the good things. From this short activity we were then told that we had 10 minutes to come up with a 10 minute lesson on anything. We would then teach it to our group. The lesson must also engage with different types of learners such as, aural, visual and active learners.

Within moments everyone seemed to be planning their lessons. I however, hadn't even figured out what to teach! So I sat back and tried to think of a relatively easy but interesting lesson that I had in the past. The first thing I came up with was a geography lesson taught by one of my favourite teachers in year 8. It was - the course of a river. Okay it doesn't sound that interesting but I tell you now it ticked all the boxes. So with the last 5 minutes left I planned my lesson.

Here is how I managed it

Visual :use the white board and pen to draw the shape of most rivers labelling when relevant,

Aural :Speaking clearly and at an understandable pace I talked through start of a river and the end.

Active :Once I had reached the middle course of the river I got my group/imaginary students to stand up. I asked one to volunteer to act the river and the rest would stand semi randomly around the room with one person standing directly inline with the course of the river. I then told the rive to walk forwards until it came to one of the students. From there I explained that this student in the way was resistant rock and therefore the river could not continue on its path and would have to move to the side where there was no resistant rock. This therefore explained in a basic way why rivers meander.

Surprisingly it went very well and I could tell that my examiners were impressed. However, I did need to improve my timings.

Next was lunch time which I was dreading. At the time I had been having a lot of trouble with dairy. This meant that I was on the special dietary requirements list and a.k.a had the walk of shame every lunch time to collect my meal first while everyone watched and waited for theirs. Gutting!

After we played a group game before heading off to our hosts house.

Allison took us to her favourite beach which was the most stunning one I had ever been too. To my surprise she said that she had never taken any volunteers to it. I felt very privileged and realised she wasn't as tough as I thought. We stayed there until 23:00 and watched the sun set.

Day 3

This day was testing our physical fitness, our bravery and our personalities.

Physical fitness task - Plough a field by hand with our group

Bravery - Walk up to the highest point on Coll and squeeze under a huge bolder

Personalities - Have a controversial conversation with one of the leaders and then have a chat about our personal statements with another

The physical fitness task was not particularly hard. Although it made you a little sweaty it was really just about finding the right technique to do it and living with a green thumbed mother meant that this didn't take me long.

The bravery task was also not hard for me. I do not suffer from clostrophobia and having seen people bigger than myself master it I thought it easy.

Personalities - This was my favourite task. I love a good political conversation as my friends and family will know. I had also just done my AS level in World Development so any question that the leader fired at me I had an answer for. My personal statement however was by far the hardest of it all. Having written it a while back I could not for the life of me remember some of the things I had written down. This meant when she asked me questions on it I often gave her a blank look before coming up with some untactful answers. Not the best...

In the afternoon we were talked to by different return volunteers about the countries they had spent time in. It was a chance for us to get an idea of the 3 countries we would chose. It also gave us a chance to consider whether we wanted to do a 1 year project or the 8 month project.

Up until this point I had been pretending that I had chosen the 1 year project. This was because there seemed to be a stigma that the 8 month project volunteers were not as good as the 1 year volunteers. Therefore, I was in no way going to let on that I had in fact chosen to do the 8 month one.

After this I figured out that the countries I wanted to go to were Honduras, India and Nepal in that order. From this I had to write down in a booklet why I had chosen them. In all honesty I wanted to go to Honduras because the project was on a cool Island, I wanted to learn Spanish and because it has been rated the murder capital of the world so it sounded very daring. I wanted to go to India because it looks like a beautiful country and I would be learning about it in world development in year 13 and I wanted to go to Nepal because the project is one of the most extreme and remote so again this whole trying to impress thing. However, I obviously needed to write something better than that.

(I was going to add a photo of what I actually wrote.. but I have lost it)

The evening back at the hosts was difficult. We had been told at the start of the week that we were to plan a presentation about something to do with the Isle of Coll. We could not use the internet because we were not allowed our phones. This meant the only resources we could use were any books around the hosts houses, our hosts and any other residents. However, the catch is that all residents and our hosts know that they are our main source of information. Therefore, they make their answers to our questions difficult and not helpful unless we word them in a way that opens up conversations. Like a game. This made it extremely hard especially as at first thought there is almost nothing on that Island to create a whole 10 minute presentation on! Honestly its grass, grass, beaches, few houses and rabbits! So for 3 days I had no idea what to make one on. Additionally our host was being particularly difficult she seemed to be in a tired mood most evenings and was not responding much to our questions. So instead of pushing it too much I asked her things that I knew she liked talking about i.e. her granddaughter and her son. After all we still had another full day.

Day 4

Jess Perelli! My life saver.

On this day we had to:

Complete some community service

Finish planning our presentations

Finish our booklets

For the community service we were split up into random groups and sent off in different places around the island. I was put with Victoria (the girl that was in the bunk next to mine in Oban) and another girl who I had not met. We were told that we would do whatever Jess Perelli, one of Coll's residents, wanted us to do. Our task was gardening and mine specifically was raking her lawn. This sort of task satisfies me and so I was very happy with it. Victoria was also given the task and it gave us a chance to catch up. The day seemed to go quickly and soon Jess brought out a tray of treats and tea! We sat outside on her bench and scoffed. Luckily I was sat next to Jess and I was keen to start up a conversation. This talking to new people thing was getting much easier, "So how long have you been involved with helping Project Trust?" Expecting an enthusiastic answer I sipped my tea, instead I got, "Not long they are so unorganised that I was put off working with them for years!" This was the first bad comment I had ever heard about PT and the description of "unorganised was far from what I had experienced so far". Choking a little on my tea I realised that a conversation about PT was probably not going to get me far so instead I complimented her on her plot of land. That she seemed to like, and we soon got into an in-depth conversation about the environment, politics and of course economics. I found I was learning a lot about Coll's economic and environmental problems. The main issues were housing and the rabbit infestation. She was a cynical and pessimistic woman but I liked her. I soon realised that I would be doing my presentation on these exact two issues and I would ask my hosts questions on proposed solutions. Thank you very much Jess!

Back at the Fraser's I was able to scribble down everything that Jess had told me.

During dinner Mr Fraser asked each of us where we undertook our work experience. When my turn came he gave me a concerned look and said, "oh dear that must have been difficult Jess doesn't like to talk much" to that I replied, "not at all, we got on perfectly well and had a very long conversation". Clearly shocked he placed his fork and knife down. I explained some of the things we talked about and soon he also starting contributing to some of the issues Coll has. This was my perfect chance to ask whether he had thought of any solutions which to my delight he did. The rest of the night I spent writing down my presentation and finishing my PT fundraising booklet.

Picture of my presentation planning

Day 5

The presentation

The interview

The kayleigh

The last day and the day of the presentation. This was by far the hardest task of them all and one of the last things they would remember me for. It needed to be good.

Having woken up for the first time without a cloud of tiredness above my head I was pumped to nail my presentation. Feeling pretty sure no one in my group had come up with the same idea as me and so I was feeling confident in my ability to impress. I read through my presentation one more time before putting my notes away and meeting the other girls for breakfast.

As soon as we arrived at the PT center we were sent off to our separate group rooms. The boy in our group went first as usual and then I followed. This time I made sure that my timings were perfect. I kept at a steady pace and left enough time at the end of any questions my peers may have had. It went really well. I was happy with it.

After the presentations were all done, we gathered in the main room and handed our fundraising booklets in as well as a hand written description of a "time in our lives which was very difficult and how we managed it". I was quite nervous about them reading mine because it was such a sad and difficult time for my family that I didn't want it to sound like a sob story and I didn't want it to sound as though I was making myself out to be the hero of it all. Those kinds of people annoy me. Writing things down like this to the leaders of PT was not really my cup of tea.

If i'm honest, I can not remember exactly what we did after that.

In the evening we were sent back to get dressed up for the Kayleigh. This is a traditional Scottish dance that is usually done as weddings and social events. It was a chance for the leaders to see whether we were good at integrating in with different cultures. It was actually a huge bundle of fun. Victoria picked me to be her dancing partner and we were on fire! We nailed each of the turns and stamps of the feet! It was then that I realised why I liked Vic so much. She was one of those people that made you feel as those you were just the person that she wanted to spend time time with. She makes you feel special. (*gags a bit*)

During the dance people were being pulled out to have an interview with one of the higher PT people. This was the last official task of them all and they just asked us a few scary questions and commented on a few things they had noticed about us. Then they asked us if we thought we wanted to volunteer and BAM the selection course was over!

Back at our hosts my house mates and I had cake, tea and cuddles before heading off to bed. exhausted and ready to go home!