My DofE Experiences I have recently completed my Duke of Edinburgh Award and it has honestly been one of the most worthwhile experiences that I have had to date: it has opened up so many opportunities that I would not have had otherwise and has put me in a very good position, in terms of diversifying my university application. Through the DofE I have met a vast array of inspiring and supportive people and I have had the privilege of working with fellow students, with whom I have now formed solid friendships. Why I chose to do the DofE award? My interest in DofE started in Year 10 getting involved in the bronze and silver award as part of the extra curricula activities that were on offer at school; having thoroughly enjoyed the experience and wanting to challenge myself all the more, I enrolled to take part in the DofE award once I joined sixth from. Having changed school at the start of the year, taking part in the DofE, allowed me to mix with different students in the school and really made me feel part of the school community. For my skill I got involved in my local swimming club, enrolling on a course to become a swimming teacher, which complemented my physical commitment to training at the swimming club too. Activities For my service I committed to volunteering at my local hospital once a week, helping during mealtimes as a way to give back to the community but also allowed me to build my confidence in talking to and comforting people –making their hospital stay more pleasant. For my residential I went o n a pre-medicine training course at the University of Nottingham and finished of the a ward with an expedition in the Yorkshire Dales. Memorable moments when completing my award I think my most memorable moments completing the DofE have to include: -Food shopping: Because so many members in my group had allergies, special dietary requirements or were just plain fussy, buying food for seven people was a challenge. On our first training event, we had a bit of a pasta disaster cooking gluten-free pasta that ended up looking like slurp and so in preparation for other training and expedition dates, we had many mock cooking trials, pizzas nights and groups trips to the supermark et–all ofwhich are memories that I will treasure for a long time to come. -Route planning: Only the people I was working with could have made this activity such a memorable and fun experience. Arguing over whether we were going to climb peaks or take a longer route round them, deciding whether we were going to do the longest legs of the walk at the start or the end of the five days. This time consuming, sometimes tedious but necessary task ensured that we had the best possible route for both our practicing and qualifying expeditions that left us to enjoy the experience and walking as a team (getting lost countless times), rather than constantly re-routing a route back to camp. -Another experience that is really clear is the feeling once finishing the 80km expedition, climbing all 3 Yorkshire peaks (Pen-y-ghent, ingleborough and Whernside) and arriving at the youth hostel. Despite being incredibly tired, both physical and mentally, were all surprisingly high- spirited: I learnt how to play ‘cheat’ and we were able to mingle with other teams that had completed the same expedition from the sa me sector. I can’t have spent the day before my birthday in a better way, my friends uprising me with a cake, card and birthday presents. -Outside the expedition, partaking in the award has open doors for me to partake in so many activities in the wider community meeting many people that I would have never otherwise have met and put me in a good position to learn new skills in unfamiliar situations. For example, volunteering at my local hospital for my service component made me realise that there are a whole host of people in hospital that would benefit just from having someone to talk to them and make them a cup of tea during their stay in hospital. Meeting new patients brought me into contact with people that have had completely different life experiences to me, patients who used to work in Australia, nurses who previously worked in the banking sector but most of all it convinced me that studying medicine in the future was something I really wanted to do –based on the experiences that I had during my service for DofE. -Finally my activities completing the award built up my resume and put me in a very strong position in t erms of my nomination to become an Olympic Torchbearer for the London 2012 Olympic Games. What holds true is that the person who originally nominated me for such an amazing opportunity–that I was successful in getting–I would have never met had I not signed up to complete the DofE gold award.
