Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Back to my discussion about the teambuilding activity before lunch on the second day of the student leadership camp: so the students’ seats were slowly taken away until only none were left, yet they were still given the directive that when a certain catch phrase was uttered, they were supposed to be able to sit down comfortably.

They got the gist of the solution early on, sitting on the floor and laying their butts on each other’s feet. I would have stopped there and commended them for their ingenuity, but the fascist said that he had to “respectfully” reject their solution.

So of course the students had to try the part where they sat on each other’s knees, even coming up with sitting on alternate knees (one sits on the left, who lets the person in front of him/her sit on the right knee and so on). But they couldn’t get the spacing right. Besides with several different body types to talk about, it really was tough.

They were able to sit down, more or less, but only by having their hands clasp the leg of the person behind them. At this point the fascist told them that if they were seated comfortably they should wave their hands in the air and stay that way for two minutes. Of course they couldn’t.

He also gave the students the option to give up (after all, it was already lunch time) but they wouldn’t. I got to marvel at that perseverance – even at the face of such stubborn instructions.

At 1215pm the fascist stopped them, gave them kudos for their determination, but somehow just rambled on for another five minutes about how some challenges are going to be very difficult to overcome, but not really ending up with a clear message (at least to me) about what they were supposed to learn from all that.

If I were asked (or if I had given the evaluation) I would have taken that part as a failure on the part of the fascist.

The start of the afternoon session, which was on spirituality, we all received a shock. Being isolated as we had been in campus for the past 30 hours, we did not here about the mayor of the neighboring city being ambushed, declared comatose for some thirty minutes, and finally being declared dead less than an hour ago.

Not that we were close to the guy or anything, but some of our participants do live in that city, and the resulting upheaval may be troublesome for them, and could ripple outwards to our town.

Anyway, the spirituality session had a short invocation and New Testament reading followed by another group assignment (returning to how they were divided for the motivation part of the workshop) where they were supposed to come up with their own requests for what they needed to become successful student leaders, and incorporate it in another chant using a well-known melody.

I’ll talk about the evening session of the second day and the last two parts of the program for the third day next time. With this, I close session number 596. Class dismissed.