The Memorable Four Arrows Event
The UCONN event I joined this semester is the Four Arrows. It happened during the first weekend of the semester, when all members of the humanity house came together to take the school bus to the Four Arrows site on UConn’s “depot campus.” The journey allowed the students to get to know each other and chat with the new faces. It was the first time that the Learning Community had come together as a group. Nevertheless, the short journey was fun as people talked and laughed on the bus. It seemed everyone was already in good spirits even though the event had not actually started yet.
After a short journey no longer than ten minutes, the bus stopped at a nearly abandoned area, a building that had many boarded up windows and several broken old wooden doors with paint flaking off. We alighted the bus, and when I came out, I smelled the smell of grasses and woods, and the fresh air. When I raised my head, the sun was high above us. The sky was mostly blue with just a few white fluffy clouds. On such a sunny day with fresh air, it was hard not to be in a good mood. We then walked past the abandoned building and reached the Four Arrows camp. The young student leaders of Four Arrows were very enthusiastic and lead us to a grassy area to introduce themselves and explain the philosophy of Four Arrows team-building.
They explained that the Four Arrows mark is composed by a circle with four arrows extended toward the outside. Each arrow was colored by different colors, which indicated they have different functions. The green arrow meant growth, the blue one was reflection, the red one represented energy, and brown one expressed a turning point. After learning about the ethos of the Four Arrows, we started to do some games as warm up and ice-breaking exercises. These required group chatting and kinetic exercises, making all the humanities house members have fun and build closer relations.
However, these were just the start of the Four Arrows experience; there were more challenges to come later as we went into the forest. The Humanities House community was separated into three small groups. Each group would go through a series of different challenges in the woods. The first challenge for us was for each member to go through the middle of a tyre that was hanging from the trees. It was easier for smaller people, and for people with a lot of upper body strength to get through the tyre on their own. Nevertheless, it was pretty challenging for most of us and it was clear we needed to help each other get through the hole in the tyre. We first tried to get two strong members of the group to stand either side and lift the individuals up and through the tyre. However, it did not work well as we expected since it was hard to keep stable as the tyre kept moving. So we had to think of new ways. One member of our group, Gavin, offered us a good suggestion that we should all make a “hand band,” so that we can be “stair” to let others to walk on. And the outcome proved that he was right. In this way, all members of our group passed through the hole, assisted by all other members, and we completed our first challenge.
The next event though was even more difficult than the previous one. There were several ropes binding between several trees. We were required to cross from one tree to the other one by walking on the rope. To be honest, at the beginning I did not believe anyone could make this and I thought it was a joke or a trick, since only a professional acrobat would be able to balance to tightrope walk across that rope. After a lot of failed trials, a voice came out, “What if we join hands, and we get several people to join hands on each side, then someone in the middle can stabilize the rope. In that case, it would be possible for us to cross one by one.” I must admit, this was a very clever suggestion and in this genius way, the whole group passed the challenge.
After that, we discussed the day’s events, evaluated how we worked as a group, and shared what we have learned from this event. For me, the most important lesson was that you cannot do all the things alone, sometimes you need to work as a group, and a good group is even more powerful than the sum of all single members alone.
At the end of the afternoon, we returned to the school bus and had a good journey back. By the time we arrived at Watson Hall, everyone was kind of tired and hungry, and ready for a relaxing evening. We all had fun through this activity and also learned some lessons and gained some precious memories along the way.
