From University to Unbound: Brock’s Ascend Story
Hello! My name is Brock Greenhill, and this is my Ascend story.
When I first heard about Ascend, I was shopping for colleges and wanted to go somewhere with a lot of people. I thought that if there were more people, I would have a better chance of finding a community for myself. I thought, “There’s not enough people for me in this Ascend thing.” So, I went to a big university for one semester, and I had to come home at the end because of health problems. I was pretty bummed out, especially since my health issues would not allow me to go back to living on a large campus. As my family and I prayed for direction, Ascend came back up. Before, its size had been a downside, but now, it just might be the perfect opportunity for me to find friends while taking classes. Both me and my twin brother decided to give it a try. Neither one of us knew what to expect, we had just come from a university with a freshman class of over seven thousand students, and now we were joining a group that was less than our first English class had been. We were both a little nervous about being able to find people who we could relate to, after all, how many people could possibly relate to the wild homeschool adventures we had been on? Our first encounter with Unbounders was when our flight to our first APEX was delayed. Olivia Jacks worked wonders and got us a flight to a nearby airport where Victoria Schurter picked us up. Right away, we connected with Victoria as fellow homeschoolers, and she told us we would love the event. We arrived, and once we got to the dining hall, we were greeted by multiple students and facilitators excited to get to know us. By that night, we had met all of our Ascend teammates in person and had already made meaningful connections. Over the following days, we participated in challenges as a team, among those, the infamous REST Race. (If you know, you know) Through these challenges, we got to know each other much better than a lot of the friends I had known for years. The immersion, while rapid, and intimidating at times, was something that will stick with me for the rest of my life. I got to not only hear about the trials and victories my teammates had endured but share mine as well. This vulnerability led to deep trust, candor as we called it. We named our Ascend team the B2 Bombers and spread an atrocious number of tiny, stick-on bees at each event throughout the year, but what I loved most about our team was our ability to work through obstacles and challenges together. We trusted each other and would not hesitate to jump headlong into one of our teammate’s ideas. Our decisiveness led to our victory in the Rule 4 Gauntlet at Basecamp among other things, but most importantly, it taught me that being the first to act will give you a distinct advantage, and more often than not, victory. This, combined with Theodore Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena speech that was the theme at Basecamp that year, gave me the courage to take action in my own life. I hadn’t realized it, but I had been living in a mindset that said I had no control over my situation, and that life “happened” to me. Flipping this narrative I had created for myself is one of the most life-changing things I have ever done.
At Capstone, the final event I attended as a year one student, Dr. Myers taught us how to tell our life stories. This was where I was able to see how far I had come. Sometimes, it is easy to keep climbing the ladder of life, and only see the last rung you stepped up from, but when you shift your perspective outward, you see what a blessing it is to even be alive, let alone have as great of an opportunity to impact the world around us for the better. And the best thing we learned was that no matter how big or small your story is, it can have an impact on others. When you get told that one person can’t change anything and that you are doing it wrong, remember the man in the arena.
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
—Theodore Roosevelt, Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
This lesson gives me the freedom to push forward and be willing to fail in the process. “Failure is an option,” is the cornerstone of Ascend, and quite possibly the most important lesson my generation needs to learn. In a culture where everyone is perfect just the way they are or winners by default, my generation has stalled out. I would encourage anyone who feels stuck or aimless to try Ascend. It’s not a silver bullet, but a guide to understanding yourself and the world around you.
Thank you, and God Bless!
Want to learn more about Ascend and see if it’s the right fit for your student? Schedule a call with the Unbound team today!
