#ncsthechallenge

[shazedabarakah]

Day 54 - Second day at NCS and we were really proud of our noodles! I still didn't get any sleep but it was beautiful watching the sun rise and i wore makeup and cool sunglasses and pretended I was a judge for X-Factor and the university was my house! Yeah okay I was sleepy and bored 😝

[shazedabarakah]

Day 45 - Late night packing and convos with special peoples x Also the nose stud ain't real it's just a gem sticker! And I am finally done packing for NCS WOOO and i don't feel so nervous which is good :)

[icreativityactionservice]

Our NCS programme is an intense three part programme for 15 to 17 to take on new challenges, learn new skills and meet new people.

My experience with NCS was at first challenging due to the fact that I didn’t know anyone there. Although it is set up so that each person is put with people in their school boroughs, I was in a different category and therefore didn’t know anyone. However, I interacted with the people in my team (mainly the girls) and got to know them. The action (personal) part of the program was the section that I found the most difficult, pushing yourself to go out of your comfort zone and do things that you may have never done before. Sometimes the support of the team felt a little bit patronizing because none of us knew each other that well. However, we all had to push ourselves to get through ‘the challenge’ and I believe that I had fun doing it. During the program there were arguments between and within teams that caused problems when working together on a project, but we had to be mature and diffuse the arguments. It was hard at first but after a while it became easy to communicate with our team and others to diffuse situations and get on with the work. Every week we would have two different people who would work together to lead the team in their tasks. This helped me to improve my leadership skills and to make quick decisions. I found that leading a team was a lot of pressure and came with a lot of responsibility with making sure all the equipment was present and that everybody was accounted for whenever we went out on a field trip. The NCS programme helped me improve my confidence to talk to new people. It also improved my communication, leadership and time management skills. I was also able to improve my ability to work in a team and participate in the tasks/activities that were set. Overall NCS the Challenge is something that I would recommend for others to take part in due to the fact that you are able to learn skills such as looking after yourself in a university setting (Greenwich University), that school cannot teach.