Toppieshoek Creating Bonds

It seems like it was only recently that the 2010 group of first year journalism students at the Tshwane University of Technology went to Toppieshoek, but it has actually been a year. Last week the two groups of the new budding journalism recruits went on their team building exercise where they played around with water, wood and blindfolds. The purpose of the exercises they are forced to partake in is to make them become a strong bond.

The serene surroundings of green mountains and the Hartbeespoort Dam also make it easy for them to let their hair loose and enjoy themselves before embarking on their academic studies.

One of the games they play forces them to find a rope while they are blindfolded. Once they have found this rope they then have to work as a unit and create a triangle. Some of the teams execute this perfectly but there are those who bicker, fight and argue and end up not completing the task.

Another task that forces them to work as a team requires them to lie down and use their feet to move a bucket of water from one side of the line to the end. If they don’t work as a group on this task then they end up wet.

All the exercises the budding journos do in Toppieshoek allow them to get to know each other, communicate and work as a team as they will be expected to during the three to four years they will spend at the university.

After the compulsory tasks, those who can swim then had a chance to splash around in the TUT facility’s swimming pool and by the end of the day some of those who had arrived in Toppieshoek as strangers left and chatterboxes who got along with everybody. Let’s toast for 2011.