Silver Duke of Edinburgh Award

In 2022, I remember reflecting on my time participating in the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award and more importantly, I had promised myself that was the end of my DofE journey. Despite the experience teaching me so much on self-encouragement and perseverance, it was too mentally and physically excruciating… Guess what. Guess which donut decided to sign up for the silver award a year later because she thought, “screw it”. In hindsight, I was being a little dramatic about the bronze award because, oh boy, was the silver award a step-up. This time, I feel that I have grown so much, given that I am now grateful for my experience. Please enjoy the pictures and allow me to share my expedition experience.

Volunteering, Physical, and Skills

To give a brief recap, my volunteering, physical and skills sections within the programme have not changed much, so I will only be briefly mentioning them. Firstly, for my volunteering I have continued working with the PE department, helping as a badminton mentor after school with my juniors. Again, it’s younger kids, it will never not be chaotic, but I love badminton so who’s complaining! Consequently, I have continued to practice (even more now) badminton as my physical section. In particular, this year I have found that my fitness levels, both my aerobic and anaerobic systems have improved significantly, which I suspect to be due to my increased participation in badminton. Lastly, I have switched my skills to further developing my Spanish from cooking as I believe that this is a more practical and long-term skill, even if my love for cooking still persists.

Expedition

If you do any research on the Duke of Edinburgh award, you will find that the difference in expedition requirements between the Bronze and Silver award only differ by an hour of planned activity per day. (i.e. 6 hours of walking time vs 7 hours), however, this could not be further from reality. As expected, the trails were more difficult to navigate, longer and much steeper, but what we didn’t expect, was the sheer difference in elevation. To put it into perspective, the highest we had ever climbed during the Bronze expedition was 400-500m up, while during the Silver assessed expedition we had to climb three of Hong Kong’s highest peaks within 3 days which were all above 800m. The expedition experience pushed me harder and harder - we once thought the practice expedition was long and painful, but oh, were we caught off guard by the 800m elevation the first day of the assessed expedition!

With that being said, if there is one word I could use to describe my Silver expedition, it would be: Grateful. I am grateful to be alive with minimum injury; I am grateful for my teammates who were on it 24/7, supporting and bantering with each other to make the experience pass a little faster; and most importantly, I am beyond grateful for the stories and lessons I can tell from this experience.

From my practice to my assessed expedition, I have become more mature and stable with my emotions, as I can still clearly remember throwing a tantrum towards my family and having an entire emotional breakdown after finishing my practice trip. I thought of myself as the most exhausting person ever without considering how my family had spent their time, and now somehow, they had to be responsible for my emotional baggage. It did not make sense. After recovery, however, I decided to take on a new mentality just like my mom had said, “it is all part of the experience that YOU signed up for, so you’ve got to bear through it.” And bear through it, I did. Even though the assessed expedition was more physically challenging, I had a greater control over my emotions by setting small goals during the day to motivate myself. For example, I would aim to climb one hill at a time and set a longer goal (e.g. to eat lunch by 12:30pm) to preoccupy my mind with. It was never easy, but with this method of self-motivation, I was left feeling much more satisfied at the end of the 3 days. Where possible, I have definitely began implementing this method into my daily life, setting smaller goals that will amount to bigger achievements.

Back to the topic of being grateful, I am (to a large extent) thankful for the physical body I was able to build in preparation and during the programme. With weekly sessions of badminton training, I was able to build a strong aerobic system and with the practice and assessed expeditions, I have finally burnt some of the fat I have been meaning to lose and build more muscles. Since then, my figure has been trimmed to look more healthy and firm, with myself feeling more energized. The expeditions had been incredibly difficult and frankly, not something I would be thrilled to do all over again, but I must credit my “screw it” attitude because this is not an experience money can trade for. Therefore, this is an experience that I would highly recommend to anyone who gets an opportunity to do so. If not, I would encourage us all to just push our bodies physically and mentally regularly to constantly strive for improvement. After all, this is how we get ahead!

‘Once in a lifetime experience’

While writing this blog, I had a sudden epiphany: This truly was a once in a lifetime experience.

On the last day of my assessed expedition, we were approaching the final path towards the final checkpoint, where we would finally go home. That was the beginning of the end. Upon arriving at our second-last checkpoint, my group and I along with 2-3 other expedition groups struggled to find the path leading us down the mountain, which after over 30 minutes of contemplation, we decided to say “screw it” and essentially created our own path. Imagine this: you are 100m above ground-level and are leading over 30 other hikers down the hill by sliding, jumping and snapping overgrown tree branches that are attacking you from all directions. All the while, you are lost and have multiple cuts on your body. This isn’t even the craziest part, after at least 45 minutes of struggle, you reach the ground-level… only to find yourself next to the entrance of a tunnel where no pedestrians are allowed. You continue walking, and are eventually stopped by patrolling traffic police to be interrogated as to how you made your way there. All the groups are then picked up by white vans to be escorted near a bus stop to be picked up and driven home. Sounds like it came straight from a movie? Yep. Totally did not happen to me.

On the bright side, I am now able to share this experience with the world and who knows, maybe my kids in the future! That their mother was caught trespassing through a tunnel and was ‘kidnapped’ onto a white van. Sometimes, I wonder if these are the sort of experiences one may say money cannot buy; the sort of fulfilment gained from surviving 3 days of physical and mental challenge.

What’s next?

After letting my curiosity get the best of me, I reached out to my school’s Duke of Edinburgh coordinator to ask if the Gold award would ever be available to participate in, and to my surprise, it is already in the works. The stage is still early, and I am still working my way around a better body and mind for an even tougher challenge. But, who knows, if the opportunity ever arrives, my “screw it” attitude may get the best of me, and you may very well see a Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award blog in the future! For now, let me enjoy my soft, inviting bed with cloud-like pillows. Anyhow, I hope my Duke of Edinburgh Silver experience has offered you an insight into not only what the award is like, but has motivated you to seek greater discomfort so we can all improve our physical, mental and social wellbeing.

Thanks for reading, and see you all in a bit.

-Winnie 03/01/2024