My First CLIC Residential
If I'm honest I was slightly pessimistic about the weekend: I'm 19 and I figured that the weekend would've attracted more younger people than people my age and I was right; the majority of people were quite young but there was a happy median of about 15 years old, and despite the age differences I had a great time.
Up until 24 hours before the weekend I thought I was the only one from theSprout that would be going on this weekend (and I got a Sprout t-shirt because of this). Considering I didn't really know many people from theSprout anyway I didn't think this was an issue but was glad for the last-minute addition of some fellow Sprouters.
I think more people from theSprout should go, on this residential there was Sambow, NICOLEisCOOL, emb789 and myself. I had only met Sambow on the Thursday so I figured this would've been a good way to make friends with more Sprouters and of course people from other regions in Wales.
The weekend started off with icebreakers which I was slightly sceptical about but gradually just got into the flow of things and lost any confidence issues, and these were a great way to start talking to anyone and everyone that was there. The accommodation was also a lot better than I thought it would be. The food got a few bad reviews but night time excursions to local fast food places more than made up for this and got one of the young people very excited with people using her loyalty card to get her points which added up to a free Subway!
Workshops – the only thing I thought would be slightly boring about the weekend – turned out to be pretty enjoyable with casual discussions and small presentations. I have to admit the best group I was in involved fellow Sprouters: we were the grammar-nazis of the weekend and took a bit too much pleasure in correcting spelling on posters written by the other groups! [Sub-Ed Dan's note: I trained our editorial group well!]
The activities were brilliant too, a boat ride on 600bhp (I think) boats was fun and getting ridiculously wet was well worth it. On Saturday we went bowling and I humbly lost to a girl who, at the start of the night, asked "How do I bowl?" but this was overshadowed by Sambow, NICOLEisCOOL and emb789, of course, who were busy giving the Sub-Editor of Wicid a phobia of cups for their amusement.
I'm sure some people who read this but didn't go have seen the zombie movies on theSprout's Facebook page...well that wasn't the half of it: those clips were the calmer clips. Soon I'm sure everyone will get to see the first night's antics on CLIC's YouTube page, which was all directed by Emily, who was just 11 but had all the authority and vision of Scorsese, Spielberg or Hitchcock.
In fear of dragging this on for too long, the weekend was incredible, it's something that I'd recommend to everyone that contributes to theSprout and the other CLIC websites.
I have a few pointers though:
1. Prepare to not get your full 8 hours sleep
2. Be confident. Everyone loses any social inhibitions they may have had anyway so just go with the flow
3. Take good tea bags, the tea bags there were the worst thing but luckily we found some in the 'secret' staff room and had our own little tea maker to make us tea!
Thanks to Kath, Dan, Ryan, Daria, Geoff, Tania, Bethan, Claire and anyone I missed. It was a great weekend.
Links:
To read more about our CLIC Residentials, check out these articles:
5 Comments – Post a comment
Sprout Editor
Commented 20 months ago - 1st June 2010 - 12:57pm
It sounds like it was brilliant! Am gutted that I wasn't there :( I'll definitely make the next one!
jeopreddy
Commented 20 months ago - 1st June 2010 - 19:00pm
Yes, I have 1,169 Subway loyalty points and yes, I did beat all the males in my bowling lane, which is lliving proof that females are the dominant sex. Hoorah for womankind!
CLICryan
Commented 20 months ago - 3rd June 2010 - 10:58am
Oh, jescc, am I left with no option but to draw your attention to the Discrimination section of CLIC...? ;0)
jeopreddy
Commented 20 months ago - 3rd June 2010 - 21:32pm
CLIC is so helpful, it has educated me that both sexes have equal rights, etc. but I am a competitive person and would much rather battle of the sexes! WOMANKIND.
emb789
Commented 20 months ago - 7th June 2010 - 21:58pm
Ahh, cups. How much fun we've had with them! We even gave one to Gareth as a "souvenir". It was one of the ones with an angry face on it, and I have one up in my room, too! Grammar-Nazis (which, by the way, should've been capitalised, tut tut!) are going to take over the world, starting with correct use of capital letters and full stops!