PDW stands for Personal Developement Waste

A week of water and rocks at the end I’ll be a rock. Personal development week “a wasted week away from the classroom.” Agreed. The whole idea of spending a week away from school that has only just started, stepping out of your comfort zone, and with plenty of free time is useless and by far more dangerous than a traditional learning environment where we could genuinely learn important/useful information.

Rhythm in life is almost as essential as breathing. Rhythm provides structure and routine which make life less stressful. Having PDW so early in the school year is difficult when students are new to high school and the campus. In my case even harder being completely new and having to find friends at the same time. Once I finally established rhythm then our wasted week can and has left me perplexed and distraught when coming back to school.

One of our main challenges for PDW week is try and overcome fears or to step out of a comfort zone. In many cases we could skip an activity that we simply didn't want to do which betrays one of the main reasons we go to PDW in the first place. This is time wasted because we aren’t even learning or achieving what we are suppose to. From example via. Ferrata including abseiling down a 50 m cliff and some students who were afraid or jittery about heights choose not to participate even though it could have been a refreshing experience and we would have used our week how we are suppose to.

A fun “packed” week to escape to learn and study for a future. Pack is defined as “cram a large number of things into.” The week is false advertisement because with the amount of free time we were given we could have been doing something more useful. Some of the goals we are given or set aren’t achieved or mentioned again and we could have achieved twice as many objectives in a full week at school in a concentrated holistic environment.

Author’s note

I personally do enjoy PDW and think it is an great way to spend a week especially because it involves new things that I am willing to try and do on my free time with my family if I can. But for this post I decided to challenge myself by thinking from a different perspective.