A fortnight spent listening to Senior Personnel

Some of whom, of course, were better speakers than the others. The parts I remembered most vividly, nonetheless, were not necessarily presented by the best speakers. They were the real-life anecdotes which some of them sprinkled to underline their point. Some of them were really inspiring, even if they were not particularly well presented. Such as the Commando Encik who insisted on running a 100km ultramarathon despite suffering from food poisoning, and who eventually helped his team clinch second overall. They were all the more inspiring for having been real, for having the added dimension of sincerity as compared to all the dry and 'airy' theory that formed the bulk of the presentations.
The other strong impression I got was that all the theory and skills we were being taught were no more than common sense, only now put into a framework, given some structure. Neuro-Linguistic Programming, in particular, although that might have been because we were taught a simplified and somewhat bowdlerised version of that. Maybe that is what knowledge and wisdom are after all: only the conscious, systematic organisation of what we naturally know as common sense into frameworks and structures. Or maybe common sense is just a chimera. As Voltaire put it, 'On dit quelquefois: "Le sens commun est fort rare."' : 'Common sense is not so common'.