Can you live out of your PASSION for a week?
CoVersity Boot Camp is designed to experience self around the passion. Hmm, you may ask how does one really do that? We believe by DOING.
And that’s what the boot camp is designed around – enabling the participants to co-create every aspect of their week.
The young participants co created their action packed week around 5 key elements – group project, self challenge, hatke matke (fun element), self visioning and understanding CoVersity while also experiencing the flavor of Aarohi campus and community.
After having decided on their group project together, it was time to take up the self challenge for oneself. And the guidelines were designed to initiate them onto a self-led journey.
Learn something in your interest area which –
- Can be done in 4 days
- Has not been done before
- Looks kind of out of your reach
- Has a clearly defined output
- Can be attempted with available resources
- Is exciting for you – something that you have been looking forward to accomplishing.
Nothing easy about it, isn’t it? But, it was amazing to witness how each self challenge was unique and inspiring at the same time. Some were very clear from the start, some unsure where to begin and extremely daunting for some. But the common factor was their willingness and enthusiasm to figure it out for themselves.
And so they began and deep dived into their interests:
Hari made a movie – it took him 3 days to understand what it felt like to pursue his dream of filmmaking. He made grand plans only to realize none of them were working. Quickly, he adapted to the situation, altered his plans and finally shot his movie. While he could not edit and process his movie completely, he released a powerful teaser. The challenge got him to immerse himself in the stream of ‘Doing’ and made him realize that grand ambitions are achieved with smaller yet consistent efforts everyday.
Bhavana was clear, she wanted to compose a song from the start to end. The last upload on her YouTube channel was 2 years ago. She had hit a creative block, totally unsure if she could get out of it. She stayed persistent, unwavering throughout and at the end, she felt an immense sense of accomplishment after having performed her original composition.
Aparna had always stayed away from gradients in sketching. The very thought of attempting it, scared her. She had her share of highs and lows. She wasn’t completely satisfied with the results but she was happy to have started somewhere and created 7 gradient sketches in a week.
Nikhila was very clear that she was not at all clear about her interests. She liked fitness, loved K-pop music, dabbled in skating and planned to run a marathon. Initially, she decided to create a fitness routine for her marathon plans. 2 days into it, she was unable to do anything as per her plan. She contemplated, made new plans, discarded them all, spoke to everyone to get some clarity. But her situation stayed far from clear. There was immense discomfort and all the churning, lack of clarity was creating an emotional upheaval within her. 2 days were already wasted but she mustered courage, decided for herself that she would learn to play an entire song on the keyboard. And she cracked it in 3 days straight. But her bigger achievement was she had learned to manage her own life situations.
Sriya decided to learn a new tool for applying the final touches to her client project – designing a brand logo. The challenges were aplenty – decide on the tool, learn it from scratch, overcome her own creative blocks. While she could not complete the task she had set out for in entirety, the entire process had transformed her on many levels.
Imagine CoVersity which does not make the learning easy. Children like it challenging anyway.
Imagine CoVersity that is not a restaurant, rather a kitchen. We have no dishes to offer. We do not serve our children any learning on a platter. We aren’t cooking to satisfy the children.
We’re like a kitchen: Raw material and tools (resources) of all kinds are available. Children are challenged to cook for themselves, to create their own learning, to explore, experiment for their own reasons, to satisfy their own hunger.