Ski Competition

I just had come back from the trip to Szczyrk, small town in the South of Poland, with my friends where I was on a voluntary service during ski competition of doctors and lawyers. It was organised by my friend’s parents and we were taken to help with the organisational things like doling the start numbers, checking the presence of the competitors, logging the scores and then collecting the start numbers back. Very simple job, but we had to be extremely focused because there were a lot of people at one time that wanted to list. What was surprising to me is that the competitors that should be well behaved because of their social status but they were not. Standing in the queue waiting for those numbers they were acting like wild animals screaming and shouting to us many at one time. It was a terrible situation for us, because we couldn’t handle it in this fast tempo.

Then another challenging job was to collect this numbers. I tried to be polite to all those people. I understood that it was 11 p.m. and they were tired after a few rides, but I was too and I didn’t want to postpone it on them. Also very surprising for me was competition between doctors and lawyers, but also among the families and friends. For me it wasn’t healthy competition but tug-of-war and it was not right, because that supposed to be a fun and joy for everyone.

We had spent about 8 hours at the outside during a freezing cold weather so unfortunately I was terribly sick for the next day of the competition but still it was great experience for me. I could get to know about the organizational side of such an events and also meet some new people and know their attitudes and behaviour to this case. I also learnt that people shouldn’t be judged by their appearance because sometimes it could mislead us in both sides and make us feel astonished.

Learning Outcomes:

• Plan and initiate activities
• Work collaboratively with others
• Show perseverance and commitment
• Increased awareness of strengths and areas for growth 
• Developing new skills
• Undertaking new challenges