The stay in the village was five nights and six days long lasting from 2023 December to Lachhkadi. It was a life-changing program for each student, arranged by the institution, that has provided each student with a possibility to showcase their creativity, activity, and service-oriented aspects of CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service). With anticipation, I fully got involved with this project in order to experience rural village life firsthand. My intentions were also to closely perceive their challenges as well as contribute to their difficulties, identify new creative projects, and share the excitement of the common activities with my friends.

LO2 : Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

While there, I experienced many challenges for the first time especially in the divisions of production, field cleaning, and farming. The indigenous persons were very important in training me on the new skills I needed for these tasks. One of the significant issues faced was the removal of mature turmeric to allow the space for the plantation of new crops. This was not the only preparation that was challenging from the physical point of view, but these activities required a careful gesture from me not to torture the field and the plants. I had to spend a considerable amount of time and applied a lot of effort to do the process correctly. Moreover, I was given the responsibility of removing the unnecessary weed vegetation which was the most crucial step to make plants grow healthily. This encounter presented me with an understanding of why practices such as precision and care in agriculture are so essential and I have a new respect for the labor involved in farming.

LO6: Engagement with issues of global significance

Many of the projects were obligatory for the students to engage in, at least for a short term. Grey sat in the small classroom until the bell rang for lunch. Street boys and charcoal catches ripped the opaque cyan. When we reached the wall, the brick seemed to be an assemblage of matching adjectives – tremendous, ponderous, beautiful. The others saw me picking the water bottle with a sparrow, demanding it to sing one more time. Whenever he left the room it was his image that still burned in my mind – a fleeting flame to attach to so many moments. During nightly hours when life becomes a wisp I am a stub of datetime – discarded to join others of the kind, the parallels, and obscurities.

LO4: Commitment and perseverance in facing challenges

The unending drill program was excruciatingly tiresome with me being perpetually engaged in one task after another and then the schedule that had also occupied my entire day. The weather was also a real bother for us: it was very chilly during the nights and mornings but then during the day, the situation got worse as it was hot and midges would come out overwhelm us. This fluctuating environment did not make our physical duties easy to deal with. Despite the difficulties one of the key elements was dedication and perseverance. – It is important to mention that the inclusion of every single aspect of the process, my outstanding presentation of work, and the fun that I got in completing the tasks were directly connected to the overall success I have been through. The road that led me to the knowledge that commitment and persistence are principles to getting the foremost from life. If somebody misses them, they do not accomplish the things they set as goals and abandon the challenge with ease. The happiness of getting through these problems and helping others had been so great that it reiterated to me the absolute need for hard work and dedication.