Many childhood experiences have lifelong impression on people. Write an essay you describe a memorable childhood experience and explain its effect on your life.

I had many exceptional childhood experiences, one of the most memorable one that have lifelong impression on me is the outward-bound summer camp. Through this program, I learned problem solving skills, solving interpersonal conflict, and time management. It was the summer before my senior year in high school, I enrolled to a summer camp, and it was an unusual camp. This camp was held in a forest in Davis, California. Each camper teamed up with two other campers and required to stay in the forest with limited supplies for six nights. Apart from this, the coach assigned multiple tasks for us, and we had to complete each task in a pre-determined schedule to reach the final destination. Before I joined this adventure, I considered myself as an introverted person. I rarely made new friend easily, and I never stayed out from home. I started this camp with full of fear and anxiety, but I experienced some changes after the first night. At the first day of the camp, I met two of my teammates, Susan and Mary, and we were all very quiet at the beginning. After the briefing from the coach, we started our journey. By the time we arrived at the first check point, we had already walked ten miles. We felt extremely tired and hungry. However, we had to figure out how to cook in the forest without proper cooking tools/utensils. Susan suggested that we consume the canned food without cooking. Mary and I disagreed because we knew that if we finished the canned food at the early stage, we would run out of the food later on. Instead, we should find a way to cook the raw food. We had some conflicts, but we came up with a solution and cooked the raw food for our first meal. At that moment, I realized we had to think before acting, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to finish the whole journey. Shortly after the meal, we continued to walk because we had to reach the campsite before sunset. As we continued, we encountered multiple difficulties and we learned from the mistakes and arguments. After another ten miles of walking, we arrived at the camp site. We needed to set up our “home” there. However, we were exhausted and none of us were willing to set up the “home. ” I encouraged myself by listening to my music, and I shared the music with the two girls. We spent about half hour doing nothing but just enjoying the music. Naturally, we felt our energies return and we started to build our “home” together. We knew that we had to finish the tasks before sunset and we had to utilize time wisely. After the first night, we solved different problems together, we learned the individual differences and became less conflicts, and we also used our time in an effective way. We overcame all the difficulties and completed the whole journey together. Today, I look back to this training program, I am still proud of myself and my two teammates. I learned how to come up with solution after the problem, the importance of understanding from other’s perspective, and planning before taking action. These are all important skills and have lifelong impacts to my life. More importantly, I made two good teammates and they are my best friends now.