Wild Weekend in Dartmoor National Park

On Friday, I was up at 4.30am to get ready and go into Edinburgh to catch my 9 hour train down to Plymouth for the Royal Academy of Engineering's Wild 1 course, set in the beautiful Dartmoor National Park. I was eager and ready to go and see what the weekend would bring as I really had no idea of what to expect once I arrived.

Upon arrival at Plymouth Station I found the rest of arrivals for the course and we all got chatting about our different courses and what we were thinking we were doing over the course. This was when I first met Aimen who studied in Leeds and he was telling me about a placement over in Tokyo he had an interview for. TOKYO!! I was amazed, and it really got me thinking about why I have limited myself to just looking for placements locally in the UK and so it is now my intention to broaden my horizons a bit and look all over the world for some experience as I believe it would be an even better oppertunity and experience.

Once we got to the Dartmoor Training Centre, I met the rest of the participants and the WILD team, who were absolutely brilliant. We had a briefing and then were split up into 3 teams of around 9 or 10 people. I was put in team Yellow and then we were told that the teams are in competition over the course of the weekend. Once we were in teams we were given the task of remembering everyones names, their engineering discipline and the university they were from. There were people doing civil engineering like myself to those doing automotive engineering and ship science. I was so surprised by the broad spectrum of courses. Afterwards, we had our dinner (Shepherd's Pie and Veg) and then got down to some problem solving activities which included building a tower from card, aiming to achive the maximum height possible whilst maintaing stability. It was a great night and a good oppertunity to get to know my teammates. After the challenges we had time for a beer to wind down and then and bed.

On the Saturday, each team set of at intervals of 45 minutes in the morning with a clue as to where the destination was. After working out some anagrams and a bit of map reading, we had our destination, a route and our first bearing and left the training centre at 8am. On reaching our destination, our team was presented with a challenge. We were to transport a dummy (posing as an injured person) across a series of rivers, find medicine for the dummy and get into a safe zone in as quick a time as possible. It was a great task and challenge and a big learning curve for us all. We all had very strong opinions of how to carry out the task and it became very apparent that we were all used to leading teams as opposed to following someone else. Soon, we learnt to listen and work as a team properly to find the best strategy for the challenge. After completing the challenge, we recieved another clue about our next destination and so on the day went. The other challeges were abseiling down a cliff face, herding our blindfolded team into a pen using whistles and rattles and then crossing a freezing cold lake using some rope and rubber rings (no swimming was allowed). After drying off from the last challenge we were brought back to the centre for a warm shower and some tea, coffee and cakes! Our team then set to work on another challenge we were faced with - creating a play based around the question 'What is an engineer?'. We chose to go along the route of a comedy sketch which looked at solving some simple engineering problems and we included a video of some engineering structures we encountered during the day. It was then time for dinner (Roast Garlic Chicken with Veg, Coleslaw and Potato Salad - Amazing!) before we all sat down for the results of the days tasks. Our team was in joint 1st place with the Red team, and the Green team came last. So it all came down to our plays. The other teams were really good and entertaining and so we didn't think we had a chance of winning but... we did! Afterwards, we all went down to the local pub with the WILD crew for a few drinks before bed.

Sunday morning was a lazy start but we were up and out by 8am and set to work on some challenges including creating a guttering system for water to be transported uphill, guiding the team to picking up unseen objects with a hook and navigating between rocks with another dummy (we named Eve). We finished around 10am and sat down to a brunch (Sausages, Spanish Omlette, Potato Wedges and Salad) before going through the scores a final time to find that yet again we were joint 1st place! After packing we sat down and discussed the weekend in our groups before setting off home again.

The weekend was truly an experience I will never forget. I have met so many interesting and like minded people that I hope to stay in touch with and have learnt so much about myself and gained so many skills from the weekend. It was an amazing experience and will definitely be applying for WILD 2 next year.

WILD 1 with The Royal Academy of Engineering

Next weekend from Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th June I will be participating in the WILD 1 course run by the Royal Academy of Engineering in and around the Dartmoor training centre near Plymouth.

It is an exciting prospect as we have been kept mainly in the dark as to what to expect from the course but I think it will be a great way to meet and network with other engineering students from around the UK with very similar interests to myself, and to gain new skills that I can hopefully implement in my course and in my future career.

The objectives set out by the RAEng and WILD team are to help introduce the concept of leadership and teamwork and bring out our strengths and weaknesses in each field, to introduce us to Dartmoor's dramatic natural beauty and the challenges that it poses, and finally to link in the value of WILD 1 to the values and philosophy of the RAEng.

I have left a link to the WILD course website which shows a bit more about the sort of activities I'll be involved in over the course of the weekend.

http://www.evisionwild.com/

It's been a while...

Hello!

Sorry it has been a while since my last update and I have since finished the 'Pavilion Project' and will try and get the finished portfolio, poster and presentation to you as soon as possible.

This project was a great insight into architechture and engineering and I learnt alot about how portfolios work in the industry. I also learnt a lot about how I work myself as from the brilliant feedback that Jamie and I recieved I realised where my strengths lie but also where I could work upon.

It was always stated that this was a learning module, and in my fifth year we get a chance to do a similar module again, but on an even larger scale. I plan on detailing this a lot better to my readers when I eventually start even more cumbersome project. It is a daunting yet exciting prospect as there are so many ideas now floating around my head as to what to do.