RAG Report: Skydive for Salvation

Daring Trent students threw themselves out of a plane for charity – here’s what happened…

Would you jump out of a plane?

The question was posed to the student population in December by Raising and Giving (RAG) in conjunction with Choose a Challenge and 87 students answered the call to arms, myself included. The plan was to get sponsorships in excess of £400; £200 of which goes to a charity of choice, and jump out of a plane. It seemed simple enough, didn’t it?

Except it wasn’t. The sign up process garnered an audience in excess of 100 students who were all wondering collectively in Chaucer 366 a myriad of thoughts. Some relished the challenge, some came to support their friends and the mentally weak, like myself, just succumbed to peer pressure. One thing was certain amongst the uncertain minds: this would be big, bigger than any other university jump on interest alone.

So we left Chaucer 366 as eager beavers, hungry to pounce on any vagrant or vagabond for love of a tithe of sponsorship. £400 is no easy task to raise after all.

As January passed and February followed, the feeling was real. Enthusiasm and endeavour in raising sponsorship from friends, family and loved ones was being slowly eroded away by a feeling of dread and delirium. I was wondering to myself, “What the heck did you sign up for!?”

Fast-forward the lovely month of April and crunch time came. By this time, students had gathered most of their sponsorship money to their causes and were ready to do the deed. The unthinkable thought of the event not materialising never once crossed our minds.

Then volcanic activity in far away Iceland decided to be funny. In what seems to be almost destined, the volcanic eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull threatened the very continuation of the event as British airspace was closed en masse to adhere to safety regulations. I admit I had resigned myself to believing that Mother Nature owned us and reminded us about the abnormality of jumping out of a plane.

Not to be, in the run up to April 17th, RAG and Choose a Challenge worked round the clock to check weather forecasts and see if the event would go ahead. Final verdict at midnight April 16th – we were good to go.

And we were good to go, as the majority of students woke up the next day at ungodly hours just to catch the coach to Hibaldstow airfield. The look on everyone’s faces was unsure, uncertain, but almost as if to apologise for worrying us, Mother Nature provided the sunniest skies I’ve had seen since coming to England and it was a picture-perfect day for skydiving.

So the first plane went up and everyone looked at our brave comrades who chose to challenge gravity. Team Initi8, which I captained, was scheduled to jump in the afternoon and the wait for our turns was unbelievably agonising.

When it was our turn, we fitted ourselves in unbelievably unflattering jumpsuits with a tandem harness so tight it would make any self-respecting male put the high voices of the Bee Gees to shame. My instructor, a middle aged, bald gentlemen, smiled as he smelled the fear and nervousness in the air and beckoned for us to follow them into the plane. We quickly ascended and my heart started beating quicker and quicker. Everyone started cursing at me for convincing them to skydive and I cursed myself for succumbing to peer pressure.

At 10,000 ft, the plane doors slid opened. I waddled to the edge, trepid with fear. I knew I would die, the parachutes would fail to deploy and it just wasn’t worth the risk. Chris, my instructor, would have none of that and after entertaining “I don’t want to do it! It’s not worth it!” for a minute, he just jumped. With me strapped tandem, to him.

I’m pretty sure if I was judged on what I said as I was in freefall for those 30 seconds of it, I would be given a ticket straight to hell and maybe a few more times. I watched my life flash me by and watched the lovely green ground, trying to identify where I’d like to… splat. I cursed, I cringed, I cried and to my relief, the parachute deployed successfully.

We cruised along to the ground on the parachute and when my feet touched the ground, I received a high no narcotic in the world can provide. I’d just jumped out of a plane and lived to tell the tale and the feeling was sensational. Freefalling is one of the most unique, strangest, euphoric sensations in the world and once the fear subsided in me, I wanted to go back again. I’m pretty sure that although I say now that I wouldn’t do it again, come next year I’ll be just as susceptible to peer pressure as I was in my first year and probably sign up to the Great Trent Jump 2011.

The whole process from putting my name forward to jumping out of a plane taught me that the experience of a lifetime can come for free. Friends, family and loved ones all pooled together to make my scrimping and scrounging much easier.

Special mention should go out to Jo Southwell-Sander for raising the highest amount of £1,340.77 for Breast Cancer Care, Sarah Mason and Nahim Akhtar for organising the event, my jump teammates Emma Kehoe and Nicola Todd for sticking by me and collectively raising £655 for Right to Play, Help for Heroes and Barnados. Throughout the whole event, all 87 students raised £42,610.58 for a whole list of charities and we did ourselves proud.

Come next year, I am ready. Maybe it’ll be my turn to ask you: Would you jump out of a plane?

Visit RAG to find out more about fundraising at NTSU.

Vincent Au

Tags: charity, fundraising, rag, skydiving