Between July 24 and August 5 AEGEE-Tartu & AEGEE-Tallinn hosted the Summer University “Strive to be a leader, thrive to be a Succeeder”, a Summer Course+ on Human Resources. We asked Lucas, one of our members and a helper during the event, to write about the Summer University.
When I decided that I would travel back to Estonia to assist the organization team of this year’s Summer University, I thought I knew what to expect. After all, I was a participant the Estonian SU of 2015, and I have also organized two SU’s in my home local of Eindhoven. Yet here I am, one month after the end of the event, still day dreaming about it and trying to figure out what was it exactly that made it surpass all of my expectations. Because it did surpass them by a really long shot. Even if I was a helper and not a participant, I had more fun than I did in any of my previous SU’s experience, and I also feel that our participants were even more satisfied than the ones from the previous times I’ve been an organizer.
Maybe it was because this was a Summer Course+ instead of your typical Travel Summer University?
This meant that we had several workshops every day about this year’s topic (human resources/team management), which allowed us to work closer together with everyone involved. We learned about group dynamics which I think improved the way we interacted with each other in our own group! The workshops were not only really useful but also surprisingly entertaining and engaging. Who knew you could include Escape Rooms and so many other games into instructive workshops! The trainers did an incredible job with them!
Maybe it was because of all of the opportunities we had to relax and have fun together?
Even with all of the tuition hours we had, we had time for a lot of other fun and relaxing activities. Spending a day barbecuing, swimming and relaxing on the island of Aegna; dancing with strangers under the hot sun at the Folk Music Festival in Viljandi like there’s no tomorrow; and relaxing at a Lake in Elva with a picnic and the nicest music after doing some crazy monkey business at the adventure park; are just some of the highlights!
Maybe it was because of the great job the organizers did?
I am impressed by all the work the organizers put into preparing everything before the event. Everything was well thought out, and we had great locations and great food all around. And whenever something unexpected happened during the event, it didn’t take long for it to be resolved by our quick Estonian organizers!
Maybe it was because of all of the great people that we had in our group?
Both organizers and participants. We had a perfect group. With these events one is always worried that you’re going to get small cliques or “ghettos”, but (and I know it sounds cheesy to say this) we were one big loving family full of crazy/fun people!
Maybe it was all of that and many other reasons that I am missing. I know that no blog post that I write could ever do justice to this event, or at least the way I perceived it. If you, dear reader, have not experienced anything like this, and it sounds even remotely interesting, I recommend you to not rely just on my story, and go ahead and go on Summer University yourself! Only then you will really understand all the feelings I’m trying to transmit here!