"Carroll Fellow Spotlight: Sarah Long (MSB '16), "A Farewell to Can't"

In between an internship and study abroad, I found two weeks to canoe and backpack with Outward Bound. Outward Bound (OB) is an educational expedition school designed to teach students leadership and teamwork by placing them in harsh and uncomfortable environments – on this trip, carrying 60 to 80 pound packs through miles of mud, scrambling up sheer rock faces, and using only a compass and several USGS maps to navigate. I grew through several experiences with team dynamics, group responsibility, and private reflection.

Outward Bound taught me that my leadership style can be too direct and that my bias toward action can be too strong. Over the trip I learned that the “best” idea is often not the cleverest or most sensible, but the one which can garner group consensus. By the end of the trip, my peers would follow any group decision that I made by chorusing “Que será, será, será…”

Outward Bound changed my definitions of the words “difficult” and “unpleasant.” For example, OB mandates that the cook serves herself last. One morning, I had to get up at 4:45 to make breakfast and my co-cook did not help. When I served the last bowl, I realized that I had not made enough food - my delinquent co-cook received a full portion while I stared into an empty bowl. To make it all worse, she only ate half of her food. The rules of OB not only prevented me from finishing her leftovers, but also stipulated that I carry her food on my back in a compost bag for the rest of the trip. Holding my tongue through five hours of hiking uphill on an empty stomach was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but however disproportionate the consequences were, the mistake was my responsibility to bear.

During Solo, the highlight of my trip, I was able to seriously reflect. Each student sojourns alone in the woods for 24 hours with just her backpack, a rain tarp, and some trail mix. No watches, no headlamps, no pocketknives. Solo provides a unique experience because there are no goals to meet or deliverables to finish – just rationing one’s food and timing one’s water purification. The trees in my spot were spaced too far apart to hang my tarp, so I extended the tarp strings with the laces from my hiking boots. I spent the time in silence and solitude: journaling, praying, and examining my core values.

I would encourage everyone to experience an Outward Bound trip or to pursue a similar type of learning opportunity, because, in the words of Kurt Hahn: “There is more to us than we know. If we could be made to see it… perhaps, for the rest of our lives, we would be unwilling to settle for less.”

Written by Sarah Long (MSB '16)