Reflections on Scouting and Achieving the Rank of Eagle Scout
A Presentation at the Wellesley Good Scout Breakfast 2005
By Christian, Eagle Scout
When I joined Scouts, I wasn’t sure where it was all going to go. I figured I’d learn a few knots, and go on some trips, and maybe even get a few ranks under my belt. I think a lot of the Scouts and Scouters in the room might say that they had similar ideas when they first joined. It’s very hard as a 6th grader to think about where you’ll be at the end of high school. To make use of some of my newly acquired high school math skills, that’s like me, now, thinking about what life will be like when I’m more than halfway through grad school. I had no idea how important to me Troop 182 would become.
It’s funny to start this story talking about my ability to think about the future, because my first practical experience in that field comes from the troop. I vividly remember Mike Kahn sidling over to me – a Tenderfoot, or perhaps Second Class Scout at the time – and clapping me on the shoulder as I rushed to a patrol meeting. I was in a hurry to get there, because I had recently been declared the assistant patrol leader, and there was nothing of greater importance to me than being at the patrol meeting and doing something leadership-like. As Mr. Kahn arrested my movement, I glanced up at his smile as he remarked, “you look busy, why don’t you be the troop Quartermaster.”
Maybe he saw amazing raw leadership potential, but I’m much more inclined to think that Mike saw some energy that would be well spent on straightening up the closet of troop supplies. I threw myself into my work, and quickly reinvented the wheel several times in my first week as QM. I didn’t know it at the time, but as I taught myself to inventory, I was experiencing one of the great strengths of scouting. With the patient support of those around me, I was developing organizational skills.
During my first summer with the Scouts, I went to Hidden Valley Scout Camp. I earned my first merit badge there, which happened to be First Aid. Merit Badges are important for a number of reasons, not only because they aid in developing proficiency in a topic, but because they allow and encourage interest-based exploration of a large number of topics over the course of a boy’s scouting career. First Aid in particular came in handy for me the following year when a friend of mine named Adam broke several bones skiing. I’m not sure I would have known what to do without First Aid Merit Badge, and I’m sure Adam appreciates my Merit Badge counselor. Not every scout will need to use their first aid skills at some point, but the confidence afforded by much of knowledge taught in scouts is invaluable. There’s nothing worse than helplessness, and the scouting program does a wonderful job of providing boys with the confidence necessary to deal with challenging situations.
Two years after my appointment to Quartermaster, I found myself as a Star Scout, and Troop 182’s Senior Patrol Leader. When I reached First Class I had promised myself not to drop the ball, but to make it the rest of the way to Eagle, and so my attentions were divided between earning Merit Badges and trying to run the troop. I must have spent five to ten hours each week planning the upcoming meeting. It was my goal to have a preliminary agenda in front of every patrol leader by midweek. I also asked a troop officer to design a computer program to track troop attendance and to present the data periodically, while I took on the troop organizational structure. I reshuffled everything, capping patrol sizes at ten, and reassigning patrol leaders according to which boys I thought would work best together. My insanity paid off, and my 18 month term seemed a good time in the troop. As I color-coded, alphabetized, and sorted every roster in sight, the scoutmasters continued to stand behind me with patience and encouragement at every turn. It is often through the scoutmasters that the true work of scouting is achieved. As the officers of the troop worked to increase organization and be sure that no one was forgotten in our 60-scout active roster, we all learned confidence, organization, and cooperation together under the tutelage of our scoutmasters. Greenbar meetings looked like board meetings, and we might as well have been running a small, tan-uniformed firm.
During that time, I also embarked on my Eagle Project. The project is perhaps the most challenging part of becoming an Eagle Scout. I went the hard route and decided to produce and direct a documentary. It turned into an oral history project of sorts, which involved interviewing some of Wellesley’s veterans, donating tapes of the interviews to every archive in sight, and then making it all into a documentary. It took three years, but I slipped under the wire and got all my paperwork signed a few days before my eighteenth birthday. I’m proud of my project, and it rounded off a education in the art of leadership that most colleges could not hope to offer me. The point of the project is largely to ensure that every Eagle has a firm grasp on the leadership abilities that we are known for and it does a fabulous job of just that, but there is more to it than just that. The project, in many ways, brings closure to a boy’s years in the scouts. It gives him something that is definitively his, to point to and call his creation.
For me, my project was an exercise in patience. It took three years to tape the footage, edit it, do the voiceovers and finally get my work on the air. I learned the techniques of television production with the generous help of the Wellesley Channel, and put my scheduling and leadership abilities to use, trying to arrange for all of the necessary people and components to be present at the same location and time. My project also gave me a chance to make friends I never would have met otherwise. It has exposed me to the wisdom inherent in our veterans. Last year, one of the veterans who participated in my project, and a friend of mine, passed away. It really gives you a sense of the fragility of life, and of memory. I’ve found through my project, that one needs to make a real effort to learn something from the last generation, because, as it turns out, they may be the only ones you can learn that particular something from. I have learned to take due note of now, because if I don’t, it will soon have finished being “now,” and gone on to being “back then.” If I don’t keep track of the present, I won’t have any stories for future documentarians. I didn’t realize when I joined the Boy Scouts that I would discover such depth and wisdom along my trail to Eagle.
Only now, looking back, can I see the greater value in scouting. I can tie a bowline, a square-knot, and even monkey’s fist, but I can also lead a meeting, plan an event, and organize myself and others. Through no doing of my own, but through the teachings of those wiser than myself in the troop, I have found the path to Eagle to be the same path as that to responsibility, capability, and confidence. Along the way, I have somehow become trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. That is what scouting, and what Eagle has done for me. To those who are still young enough to follow the Eagle trail, take it up. Put on your pack and go, it will only get lighter as you walk, and the things you see and learn along the trail will inspire you, teach you, and bring you to a greater understanding.