After the conclusion of lessons tomorrow, on Thursday 24th of February, a group of students from EIC will have the extraordinary opportunity to immerse themselves in a different reality, quite literally!
A trip to Navrtar, a Virtual Reality Centre in the heart of Ealing, has been organised by one of our Y12 students, Umberto.
We interviewed him to understand better how this project started and what it took to make it happen (nearly) without any adults’ support.
Umberto, you recently organised an after-school group activity for yourself and a few other students. This extra-curricular experience has not been offered by the College, but it is entirely and completely a student-led initiative. Could you tell me a bit more about the trip that is coming up?
We are going to Navtar on Thursday for a Virtual Reality Experience. We are quite a mixed group of students of different ages from across the College.
Where did the idea for the event come from?
Initially the idea was to go on a trip together. A few years ago I went to the USA on a School trip and I wanted to reproduce a similar experience to the amazing one I had there.
So I proposed a trip to Spain to my friend Hasan. Obviously we quickly realised that not everyone would embark on such an adventure abroad, and we brainstormed a few other ideas.
How did you present your ideas to all students across the College?
When we narrowed our options down to three, we went around every class during Form time and we led a quick Survey by reading the options out to everyone and investigating what the preferred one was.
Paintball was on top of the list at first. However, unfortunately we would have to go quite far and hiring a bus would cost us £400! We then opted for Navrtar, which is much closer to the College.
What do you think worked well in the organization process?
I think our commitment was the key to our success. Even when it seemed that many options would not work, we still wanted to find a good solution for us; we wanted to organise something after school that we could do all together.
Throughout the organization process, Hasan was out of school for a short time, yet I kept doing my research and kept people informed on my progress.
What would you do differently next time?
I would probably make sure that everyone was aware of our initiative from the very beginning, as the initiative did not reach everyone straight away. I would probably distribute the forms to fill in myself rather than leaving them to the teachers and asking them to hand them out.
Umberto, I think you did such a great job, and everyone could tell how invested you were to make this trip work. One last question: What have you learned from this experience? I guess it was the first time you had to organise something for a large group of people; has this improved your leadership skills?
Yes, definitely. But I would say that, more than anything, I understood the importance of Teamwork. I tried to be a good leader and plan the trip for everyone, yet working together is necessary in order to achieve anything.