Reflective Essay on Residential Trip: Facing Fears and Building Self-Determination

People and Development 1
LEADING, MANAGING, AND DEVELOPING PEOPLE
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People and Development 2
Introduction
Our university planned a residential in fall last year. This is a reflective essay on my experiences
in the course of the residential trip. I will give an in-depth account of the challenges I faced, my
experience relating with my team members, and how the trip impacted my personal feelings.
Additionally, I will input various past experiences, research works, models and theories to
support my discussion. Residential trips are always a learning experience for students, and every
institution should purpose to incorporate them in their program (Ankeny 2016, p. 31)
I was thrilled with this trip since it was only my third residential trip since I joined university and
my first literally "residential" trip since my first residential trip was within the locality I stay and
my second was in a haven house in the state capital. However, I was rather anxious and nervous
about the idea of taking a residential trip outside my state. Business management is an entirely
new discipline to me being a student of international law. Therefore, I had no prior knowledge of
business ventures or how things are done in the field of business. This is where my anxiety
kicked in. At the commencement of the residential trip, we were assigned a business simulation
duty. I had difficulties understanding what was expected of me in undertaking this task to see it
to completion. I have always had low self-esteem and do self-determination at all, therefore it
was hard convincing myself that I had to take an active role in the accomplishment of the task.
Despite the fact that one of my team members offered me an explanation of everything we were
supposed to do, I still had inner doubts. My main concern was making a wrong move that would
ruin everything, as I had done in past group assignments. I had the fear of participating actively
owing to previous experiences. During my diploma studies, we had a group project where I was
involved in a class of opinions with one of my teammates. The matter was so serious that we

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were unable to complete the task on time. That is when I developed an awareness that I had
issues with my communication skills, I had a tendency of using inappropriate words which
resulted in a misunderstanding with others. I realized that this practice began way back when I
was a child. As a kid, I was a very good singer, however, anytime I was asked to perform to an
audience, I was afraid and could not express myself.
Haire (2018), in one of his motivational books, suggested that if one desires to overcome fear,
they do not stay at home and reflect on it, they rather get out and make themselves busy. It is
worth mentioning that I was born a perfectionist. I have a character trait characterized by striving
for flawlessness and setting very high-performance standards supplemented by serious self-
assessments and fears concerning other people's assessments. I thought that I needed to do it
perfectly and I failed to do it well enough, I totally failed myself and my team. This would make
me feel bad about and unsatisfied with myself. At the moment, I am still struggling with the
perfectionist disorder that makes me worry about the outcome of things rather than taking part to
see them done. I got to understand that teamwork involves considering everyone's opinion in the
process of decision-making. I also learned the benefits of working as a team to accomplish tasks.
Additionally, I realized that a real leader makes decisions that concur with all the team members.
The residential trip majorly involved tasks to be worked on as a team. However, at some point,
there was a certain task that was to be accomplished individually. The role was jumping from a
very high cliff to the waters below. Naturally, I am acrophobic; I have the phobia of heights
(Gardner 2018, p. 51). I could not imagine myself jumping from a cliff more than fifty feet high
into the waters below. My first instinct was to give up, but since everyone was doing it, I had no
choice than to do it as well. Additionally, I did not want to be embarrassed as embarrassments

People and Development 4
have always impacted my little self-esteem negatively. I decided to jump last since I was so
scared and I wanted to watch everyone else do it first so that I could gain a little courage.
According to Ankeny (2016) pushing oneself beyond your limits is the first step of overcoming
our fears.
As stated earlier, I am poor at venturing into something new due to my lack of self-determination
and the fear of failure. This explains why I am not persistent and have a tendency of giving up at
the slightest of possibilities of failure. The fear of not doing well enough or failing to succeed has
always hindered me from accomplishing my life goals. This takes me back to my junior high
school days. I used to perform exceptionally well in Random Assessment Tests compared to
finals since the former did not carry too much pressure. Due to the fear of failing, I ended up
performing way poorly in the finals. However, in the few instances that I actually believed in
myself, I would end up being victorious.
I agree with Duda and Fenton (2019), who asserted that the fear of failure hinders a man from
accomplishing tasks that could assist him to reach his goals. I had previously attempted several
times to overcome my acrophobia by planning bungee jumping with my friends, but each time I
failed since my fear made me give up on the plans. So my turn came and all the teams were
chanting my name and cheering as an inspiration to go ahead and jump. I stood there for some
time debating with myself on whether it was really necessary for me to go against my acrophobia
and jump down the cliff. On seeing that I took a long time contemplating, our task supervisor
told me that I had an option of either jumping or quitting. This worsened my anxiety and I
thought of quitting the sport. Deep down I knew that I did not want to disappoint myself or my