Thing One’s report: NYLT
by Thing One
On June 28-July 3, I went to national youth leadership training (or NYLT) held at Camp Pigott. When everybody got there at noon, we were shown around the camp and played Frisbee. Then, we were set up in patrols. Since the scout who came from China was in our patrol, we were The Foreigners, and I got to design our flag, which I got to take home at the end of NYLT.
We cooked our own food throughout the week on a camp stove. Unfortunately, on the first day our stove didn’t work. Finally, one burner did work, but then the end of the propane hose connected to the stove caught on fire, so we had the can of beef stew cold. The next day, we got another stove. Despite occasionally burning food, my patrol’s food was good. To teach about communication, we ordered what we wanted for lunch one day, and if we weren’t specific about amounts of food, we would not get everything correct, fortunately we were more specific that other patrols and got almost what we wanted.
Throughout the week, we had presentations by the staff with acronyms to remember leadership skills, and games with teamwork, like the spider web, where you would have to get through the holes in the ropes, only using one hole once and not touching the ropes. Another activity was where one person looked at a Lego building and described it to the rest of the patrol.
We also used GPS’s for a geocaching game. We followed the coordinates and used the hints to look for clues all around the camp. I found our troop guide in a forested area around our coordinates and then we had root beer floats. Another activity was the house of nails, where there was a nail stuck in a block of wood and we had to use all the nails not putting them in the wood and use balance. We almost finished it, but they fell over and it was time for the next game. We also made ballistas and would use these to catapult sponges at the staff. We did make one that was good, but it fell apart.
Every morning, there would be a weather report where a staff would throw a rock with drawings of suns and clouds on the sides in the air and say “it’s sunny” or “it will rain cows” depending on which side was up. There was also a joke of the day which either was or wasn’t funny. There was also the word of the day, where everybody would say “N.Y.L.T!!!” and somebody would say “What’s that spell?” and people would either say “nylt!!” or “Nothing!!”
All the patrols did skits involving a leadership skill; my patrol did a skit about a Korean mountain climbing crew in 1818. One of the setbacks was when my character broke his arm, so they had to change the plans for the climb to work around my broken arm.
On the last full day, we did outpost, where we camped with our patrols in one of the Camp Pigott campsites for that night. Then in the morning, we left, cleaned up the camp, and prepared for the 6:00 feast. At 7:00 PM, there were the closing flags, and we also got folders with the NYLT patch, a note card with all the acronyms, the trained patch, and a certificate. It was a good experience, and even though the presentations were boring (which everybody agreed on) I know more than I did before about leadership.
Related posts:
Tags: camp pigott, NYLT
