Student Council Training Day

On Wednesday 5th November the student council, went to Emmaus for a day of group building exercises .We started the day good and early. After the usual latecomers arrived Mr. Lynch came to us to break the bad news. Due to a lot of teachers being out there were some hurdles to climb so he couldn’t come with us.We were of course devastated, but we soldiered on heroically. A man wearing a tie and shirt entered the room and we presumed he was the man in charge. He never actually told us his name, so for the time being I’ll call him the well spoken man.

After a quick introduction, he asked us to get in to a line in order of height without speaking to anyone, Doby, or David O’Brien who’s about six foot two was rightly chuffed.With a bit of misleading hand signals we all got in to a decently orderly line, then came the hard part. In silence we had to get in to a line in order of date of birth. It was then the silly hand gestures really came out. After successfully failing at that task we moved on, we each got a partner and went to opposite sides of the room,The well spoken man then told us we had to buy a laptop off of our partners for as little as possible, needless to say they were told to sell a laptop for as much as possible, the game was on. My partner was Sean Lynch, a tough negotiator, so I pulled out all the stops, quoting Barack Obama, Samuel Jackson, Niall Molloy, private jets and even Chuck Norris, but, alas after five minutes of over exaggerated shouting we had got absolutely nowhere, although I didn’t get my laptop I wasn’t going to let it get me down, as the well spoken man had another activity for us. After a full morning of

group building exercises we got a delicious "free" lunch. It was a feast of chicken curry and pie and ice cream for dessert, along with the free food, lunch also gave us a chance to get to know the other schools student council.

After lunch we got back into our school groups to have a meeting, we were told to write down our aims for the short run, the medium run and long run, we were given fifteen minutes, but we spent most of that time staring at the other school, who were having their meeting in Irish, not to outdone, we decided to have our meeting in French, however our plans were crushed before they started when we realized none of us spoke fluent French except Dave Murphy, so we made do with English, and soon had a whole host of fine ideas, which will be revealed as the year progresses! As the day drew to a close the well spoken man told us about the 5 P’s of preparation: prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare and yes...practice? He also left us with a beautiful quote which is now an integral part of the thinking behind the student council "Give me 6 hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first 5 sharpening the axe".Then it was back to the bus, after Darren Maher gave a lengthy good bye to a girl from the other school, on behalf of the school I’m sure. On the way back we got a different bus than the one we got up, which wouldn’t be of any great interest normally, but it just so happened that Brian McGuire had left his jumper on the bus on the way up. Hate that Brian! All in all it was a fantastic day. It helped the Student Council to bond and gave us confidence to move forward into the New Year.