Learning to navigate around the many curve balls life throws you is a great skill.
Gaining that knowledge when you’re young, and knowing what to do with it, gives people an opportunity to grow and perhaps be one of the leaders of tomorrow.
Sarah Muzychka, an 18-year-old Grade 12 student at Holy Heart of Mary High School in St. John’s, is one of those people.
Muzychka, who holds the rank of master warrant officer, has been a member of the 2415 Royal Army Cadet Corps in St. John’s for six years. Being part of the cadet corps has given her a host of opportunities, the most recent being a chance to take part in International Expedition 2018 in February, when she got to travel to the Patagonia region of Chile.
Cadets allows participants like Muzychka to develop valuable life skills, including teamwork, citizenship, leadership and physical fitness, in addition to having fun and making new friends.
Torres del Paine National Park was host site for International Expedition 2018, emcompassing mountains, glaciers, lakes and rivers in southern Chilean Patagonia.
Muzychka said one of the best parts of participating in the expedition is gaining leadership skills.
“You can do a lot of things and take courses where people teach you how to communicate and be a good leader, but then the difference with trying to lead expeditions is you are trying to deal with everything you are dealing with while trying to lead a group,” she said.
“It could be weather like this outside — pouring rain — and you’re in a bad mood. Then you still have to lead a group of other people that are also in a bad mood and you have to get all the tasks you have done. This definitely develops good life skills,’’ she added.
Muzychka said she also got to employ skills she had previously learned through cadets, including canoeing and kayaking, caving, climbing and mountaineering, cross-country skiing, hiking and backpacking, mountain biking, orienteering, rafting, ropes and challenge courses.
She said they all learned a great lesson dealing with the adversity of getting lost, running in circles, when they tried to find their way back to camp and being able to laugh about it when they finally made it back.
She said the best was everyone came out smiling, laughing and focused on getting to where they were supposed to be.
“When we were kayaking, we stayed on this farm, and we took a trail one of the days. It was supposed to be a six-hour hike, but we ended up getting lost on the way back.
“One of the farmers, he went on his horse and brought us along this trail that brought us to a beach, and it was all glacier and icebergs.”
There were 18 participants in the group, and each day they were put in charge of leading portions of the expedition. Muzychka was tapped to be a group leader in charge of a hike taking the group to Los Torres, which is one of the biggest tourism sites in the park.
As leader, she had to keep the group together and make sure they were going in the right direction
Refreshing solitude
“I learned a lot of independence,” she said. “I go away a lot in the summers, being completely away from everything. While we were in the United Kingdom, we were in cities. If we got Wi-Fi we could still talk to our families on other side of the world. (During the expedition), we were all totally disconnected,’’ she said.
“When we are hiking, you are left to your own thoughts. Talking to people lets you think everything through completely. I really enjoy being off the grid for a while.”
To top off the experience, Muzychka got to experience one of her wish list items — seeing penguins in their natural habitat, something that she hopes to learn more about as she pursues biology next year at Memorial University.
“Seeing the penguins, that was really nice. It came on one of the cultural days,’’ she said. “We stayed at a hostel (in Punta Arenas) from where we took a boat to this island to see all the penguins.”
“We got pretty close to them, close enough to take pictures of them. … They are super cool because they live in holes. I found that really cool.”
Muzychka will work at the Argonaut Cadet Training Centre at 5 Canadian Division Support Base in Gagetown, N.B., one of four cadet training centres in Atlantic Canada. Cadets from across Canada and abroad will be at the training centre this summer taking part in expedition, pipes and drums, leadership, and fitness and sports programs.
In addition to taking part in the Army Cadet League of Canada International Expedition 2018 to Chile, Muzychka has participated in the Maple Leaf Exchange to the United Kingdom, taken an expedition instructor course, acted as the Army Cadet representative to the Chief Warrant Officer’s Advisory Council, and was named the regimental sergeant major of her home unit.
