CBOBS: An Essay On Friendship

It has been really hard for me to figure out how to write about my crewmates. I don’t know how to explain that they were very mean but not mean. I wrote an essay for school about Friendship and how to have good friendships, and I think it will help provide some explanation and context for you reading about my crewmates.

Opening

“The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships” (Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Joseph Gillespie, 13 July 1849). Your friends are the ones there for you in hard times. They are the ones who make you laugh. Really good friends become like family, and they are the ones who keep you going. To have really good friends, you must work hard to maintain relationships.

Friendship Requires Effort

To be really good friends with someone, you have to put effort into building and maintaining your friendship. You must make time to build your relationship; you can’t ignore them because you are “busy.” You also have to be able to listen as well as speak because a good friend does not only talk about themselves. “Friendship is not always convenient. It always requires the giving of oneself.” (No specific author, Moment’s Pause, pg 146). “When we run short on friendship, it might be because we are not willing to devote our energies to it. We simply assume it will happen, but it doesn’t. We must be interested in other people, which requires time, effort, and concern.” (No specific author, Moments Pause, pg 143) Having close friends is key to staying mentally healthy; to do that, you have to care about the other person and show that.

Honesty Is Needed

Hiding things will become obvious and can really damage a friendship. It’s not good to constantly be annoyed at your friend; if something ticks you off, just talk about it. Talking about your life with honesty is also good. You can’t just pretend that everything is fine all the time because it never is for anyone! But don’t be overly honest. While being honest with your friends is good, keeping rude things to yourself is better. Don’t tell them if you don’t like their dinner or bathroom soap! Just let it slide because they can’t make everything perfect for you. If you need to talk you your friend, find the right time. It would be hard to have an honest conversation if you were on a roller coaster. Asking to make time to talk is a good idea. Being honest can be scary, but that is okay. You might worry that being honest will end the friendship. Don’t worry! Good friends will be okay with being authentic and honest. If your friends are not interested in being real with you, they might not be great people to be friends with.

Sometimes, You Need To Find New Friends

“Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great people make you believe that you, too, can become great.” (Mark Twain as quoted by Gay Zenola MacLaren, Morally We Roll Along, Pg 66) Being careful of who your friends are will be really beinficial to you. The people you hang out with will rub off on you and change how you act. Choosing friends who are kind, well-rounded people will help you become a kind, well-rounded person. Sometimes friends change into different people, and are no longer worth hanging out with them. It may feel hard to cut off ties with people who once were your friends, but if they bring you down and make you feel bad, they are definitely not worth your time and friendship.

Conclusion

Despite all the work needed to have good friendships, there is much gain and reward. Putting time into being honest and good friends is so much more fun than having a basic friendship. Having really good friends will make your life full of joy and meaning. Hopefully, you have many good friends and will keep them forever!

Soon after this post I will try to post my post about my crew mates. I hope reading this will help you understand them better. 🙂

2024-02-26

CBOBS: Daily Flow

My days at camp were very full, and each taught me several lessons. It might be hard to follow all the mentions I make in the following posts without knowing some context, so here are some outlines of camp life and what I did in the days.

Course Days

Day one: Start at the base near Baltimore, Maryland. Pack gear and get to know the crew. Drive to the launch site on the Potomac River. Learn how to set up camp. First dinner and first night.
Day two: Learn how to paddle the canoes and then paddle down to site two. First lunch stop, learn how to make a quick lunch out of very little. Go crazy in the river. Second Night.
Day Three: Paddle to site three. Play in the river. Build crew relationships and learn more about how to work well together.
Day Four: Paddle to site four, work on team-building games, and gain more experience.
Day Five: Paddle to site five, do the solo and some team-building exercises, and gain more experience in general.
Day Six: Paddle to the transfer site, take canoes out of the water, switch to backpacking gear, and drive to the Appalachian Trail. Hike the first mile uphill to the first site. Sleep under a tarp, not in a tent for the first time.
Day Seven: Backpack to the next site. Learn more about backpacking,
Day Eight: Backpack to rock climbing site, rock climb, sleep at site.
Day Nine: Hardest day of backpacking.
Day Ten: Last day on the Appalachian Trail!
Day Eleven: Leave the Appalachian trail and drive to Boston for public service at a community garden. Drive to our last campsite in a state park. Play on the playground and enjoy our last night sleeping in the wild.
Day Twelve: Drive back to base, clean gear, shower for the first time in forever, and fly home.

Gear

On the river, we slept in tents. Since I was the only girl camper, I got my own tent.
We used Canoes on the river with 2 people per canoe except for the “party canoe,” which had 3 people
In the canoes, we used “water-tight” buckets to store food and plastic bins, and a cooler to store gear and more food.
Each person had a large backpack for their personal stuff with a plastic bag inside to keep stuff dry. We gooseneck the bags to seal them, but most of the boys did loose goosenecks and ended up with wet stuff.
Each person got a sleeping mat that was rolled up and strapped to the bottom of the backpacks.
Each boat had: 2 people (with one exception), 2 backpacks, and tents, food buckets, or boxes.
While Backpacking, we had to carry everything on our backs, so we brought fewer clothes and gear.
Each person on their back had their personal clothes, 1-2 food bags, and a group gear item, e.g., a tent, rope, stove, pot, or other things.
We slept under tarps on our sleeping mats on top of plastic sheets. I personally did not like the tarps because I am very afraid of spiders, and I found a lot in my hair, on me, or trying to go in my sleeping bag.
For rock climbing, extra volunteers hiked up with the rock climbing gear for us and one other crew, so we did not have to carry that.
Some people were stronger than others, so some people carried more than others, which was very kind.

Daily Flow

6:30-7:am wake up
Get dressed. (some days, I wore the same outfit to bed because it was kinda useless trying to keep a set of clothes clean enough for sleeping. I told myself, “Embrace the dirt” because there was no way to keep dirt off me.)
Pack up a sleeping mat and backpack.
Either collapse tents or if you are the cook or leader for the day, go to respective jobs.
Eat breakfast: breakfast usually consists of grits, cereal, sandwiches, or eggs. Our favorite was the grits because we also got sausage with them, which was cooked in honey. The honey was pretty much the only sugar that we got, so we went crazy over it.
Clean up camp and move out: Whether we were on the water or on the trail, we always had camp sweeps and then moved on to the next place. Some days, we did have a game before we left, but not always.
On the river/trail: going down the river was nice because we moved fast, only had to paddle, and could go for a swim by floating alongside the boats. On the trail was hot and sweaty and hard work. We took breaks whenever people needed them and wished we were on the water again.
Lunch: Stoping for lunch was fun on the river and the trail. On the river, we would search for a place to land, and then the cooks would make lunch, and everyone else would go into the river or hang out on land. On the trail, lunch was the best part of the day because it was the longest break, and it had food involved. Everyone on the trip was between 12 and 14 (except for the instructors), and we ate a lot of food. So much so that our instructors had to get more food on the day we went from the river to the trail because we were always very hungry.
Lunches pt.2: lunches were salad wraps, PB and J’s, or sandwiches of some sort. We never cooked food for lunches because we did not have the time or the stove fuel.
Afternoon paddling or hiking: In the afternoon, we paddled or hiked to our next campsite and took breaks when necessary. Nothing super eventful took place every single day but there were certain adventures that happened.
Arriving at the campsite: Every day, when we finally arrived at our campsite, everyone wanted just to sit down and rest, but we had to set up camp. So, every day, we got camp set up, and then we had a little bit of freedom before dinner. Unless, of course, you were the cook, then you had a job to do.
Dinner: Dinner was the best meal of the day because it was filling and tasty and longer than the others.
After dinner: After dinner, we usually had hang-out time, but some days, we went straight to the group meeting.
Group Meeting: In the group meeting, we talked about our day and gave shout-outs to people who did good things, and we discussed issues and made rules. We talked about the next day and jobs and also did some icebreakers.
Sleep: Ahhhh, at last! Sleep! Actually, most nights, sleeping was hard for me. Either I was wet or worrying about bugs. The sleeping mats were also very thin, about the thickness of 1 and a half iPhones. And the width measured the width of my notebook times 3. I measured it. It was not comfortable, but it was not meant to be comfortable, and I had to tell myself, just like with the dirt, to embrace the discomfort because doing hard things like that can build character. For me, it did.

2024-02-052024-02-25

Expedition, Chesapeake Bay Outward Bound School (CBOBS)

Do You Want To Go Spend 12 Days Backpacking and Canoeing?

Six months ago, my mom asked me if I would like to go to an outward-bound camp. Outward Bound is an organization that makes rugged outdoor camps for teenagers and adults. All their camps are not easy and not meant to be easy, but they are still very fun.

It was only a week and a half before the camp started, but she said there was one more slot. I was going to be Canoeing and Backpacking for 12 days if I went. I had never been backpacking before, and it sounded really hard, but I felt like a little challenge would be nice. The only worry I had was the other people.

In most other camps that I have been to, I have been bullied for being homeschooled, gluten-free, or just for being a nerd. (By the way, I am totally a nerd and proud of it!) I can easily handle being bullied because when other people try to bring me down, I know they are just insecure, and I don’t take their comments to heart. But honestly, it is exhausting to be constantly brought down. I was worried about being stuck with 11 people for 12 days going through really hard physical challenges while also having no emotional support. To make sure this did not happen, my mom called outward bound and talked with the people about what kind of kids they attracted and how they handled bullying. They said that the kids that come to their programs are very nice, and they shut it down if there is any bad behavior. This made me much less worried. They also told her that the trip I was going to sign up for was going to be all boys. I decided that it wouldn’t be so bad so I said yes!

What I did Not Know

Looking back, if me back then had known what was going to happen, I probably would not have chosen to go, but I don’t at all regret going now. I think before, I was not as tough, and I would not have willingly chosen to do what I did. What ended up happening was the exact opposite of what I was told would not happen. I was with 11 boys for 12 days (the instructors ended up being all girls, but they’re more there to keep you alive than to become friends), and almost all the boys were perpetually mean. This resulted in a problem for me, but I was determined to fix it. And I did!

I did not change the boy’s behavior; I changed myself. I learned how to let insults and words flow around me without hitting me. I learned how to persevere through hours of hard work and come out okay. I learned how to pitch a tent by myself with one hand and how to make a perfect tarp with only one tree to tie to. (BTW, I was SO proud of that tarp setup! It was like perfect and just the right height, and I only used one tree!) The skills I gained over the 12 days have made me a better person and helped me through obstacles, big and small. I am so glad I did CBOBS, and I would do it again.

(In the following published posts, I will detail my adventures, so if you want to read more about my CBOBS adventure, follow along!) (Subscribe 🙂

Category: CBOBS