PCJ students at Hart House Farm

In my last blog post, I mentioned that midterms could be, to put it nicely, a pain. And while I did share some of my tactics for coping with what many here at U of T call “hell month”, one favorite method was notably absent: escape from commitment.

Escape can mean different things for different people. The very accurate and official method of noting young adult activities, my Facebook timeline, showed my friends celebrating the end of midterms with everything from lazy nights in with Netflix to impromptu trips to Hawaii. And, while I didn’t have the funds or the time (Exams! Readings! Essays!) to jet off to Hawaii, I had definitely deserved something more than a night in my sweatpants watching bad reality television.

Enter the PCJ Society’s trip to Hart House Farms, which took place last week. Placed just after Halloween (also known as the end of midterm season), the annual trip proved to be the perfect opportunity to have a chance to wind down and escape from the busyness of everyday life at U of T. Having visited the farm with my Model UN team a couple of weeks prior, I knew that the farm, with its wide fields, ponds, walking trails, sauna, and lack of cell phone reception, would be just what I, and many of my other classmates, needed.

Despite the small number of students in my PCJ class, I had never had the chance to get to know a lot of them before I went on the trip. Something about driving into the wilderness* and going unplugged with them, however, was apparently what was needed to be able to meet those from different tutorial groups or years.

And meet them I did. The PCJS exec started off our trip with some icebreakers that succeeded in breaking down a lot of barriers right away. Within the hour, I was yelling the name of whoever happened to be behind a sleeping bag, and was passing everything from apples to tangerines to my classmates using only my neck. In short, whatever social anxiety I, or anyone else had come into the retreat with was quickly gone.

After our icebreakers and some lunch, many of us went for a walk to explore the farm grounds. As we walked past the property’s three ponds, fields, caves and small cliffs, I found myself talking more and more to people in my class that I’d never met before. Beyond the peer-to-peer interactions, members of the upper years were busy passing along stories from their classes and from previous Hart House Farms trips.

Throughout he rest of the night, the feeling of camaraderie was evident throughout the lodge. We played games of Cards Against Humanity, we ate copious amounts of lasagna and veggie straws, we attempted to light a bonfire, and used academic jargon picked up from too many late nights at Robarts in our general conversation. By the time we cleaned up and came home the next day, I definitely felt closer to my fellow students, both 260s and otherwise. Coming into class on Tuesday, I’ll know more names, more personalities, and more stories that I’m sure I’ll carry throughout my time here.

* Hart House Farm is in Caledon. Not exactly the real wilderness, but it’s the best we’ve got within a 75km radius.