Enthuse 2016

During the last week of the school holidays, we College Captains embarked on an experience that awakened us to our own inner-workings and taught us how to control our leadership, emotions and communication with our fellow peers. This experience was called Enthuse 2016, a five-day camp run by the Lutheran Youth of Queensland (LYQ) in Coolum.

The ‘sick as’ LYQ facilitators taught us the importance of learning about ourselves, before we can lead others. We also learnt about self-reflection and how this can help us take in important information. This mirrors back to our school lives and how it is important to reflect back on the day, something that not all of us have time to do. The most resonating impact from Enthuse 2016, was the sense of responsibility that leadership bears, which connects to the thread for this week, ‘Responsibility’.

During the week at Coolum, we were not forced to go to activities, we could say whatever we wanted and were given freedom to do what we wanted (as long as it wasn’t overtly dangerous). However, the Enthuse facilitators weren’t really giving us complete freedom; they were giving us the responsibility to create and abide by our own rules and guidelines. In our everyday teenage lives, we have the responsibility to abide by social expectations, rules and laws, not to actually establish them ourselves. This sort of foreign responsibility allowed us to reflect on the upcoming year, when we will be introduced into the adult world, given more freedom (getting our drivers licence, earning money at casual jobs) and having to balance our time between school and social life.

We have been given the opportunity to share our knowledge, emotions, ideas and character with the rest of the school community. This is a responsibility that we have gladly undertaken and we will strive as leaders to do what we can to empower the student body and to help our fellow Year 12 classmates’ transition into the adult world. As the saying goes, ‘Together We Grow, For A Better Tomorrow’.

- William Minns and Jack Gretton