By J. Harper

Freya didn’t spend her summer in a sleek downtown internship. Instead, she could be found at 6:45 every morning, keys jangling on a carabiner clip, unlocking the gates of West Coast Canopy Adventures —a high ropes and zip-lining course nestled in the old-growth forest of Lynn Headwaters.

"I started noticing who was clenching their harness straps too tight, who was looking at the ground instead of the horizon," she says. "I paired nervous people with the calmest guides. I changed the order of the group so the confident climbers went first to set a visual precedent."

Her official title was “Adventure Guide.” Unofficially, she was a safety inspector, a crisis negotiator for terrified tourists, a knot-tying savant, and, on one memorable afternoon, a minor arborist. "I’m not going to lie," Freya says, peeling off a pair of well-worn leather gloves. "The first two weeks were brutal. My hands were shredded. I was coming home smelling like pine resin and sunscreen, and my shoulders were screaming from hauling harnesses."

For most university students, the summer job is a transactional affair: trade time for currency, endure the heat, and return to campus with a few extra dollars in your pocket. But for 21-year-old Freya Mayer, a junior majoring in Environmental Design at the University of British Columbia, this past summer became an accidental masterclass in leadership, logistics, and lateral thinking.

The job was physically demanding. Between guiding groups of eight through the canopy, Freya was responsible for daily cable tension checks, gear inventory, and what she calls "the art of the pep talk."

Instead of panicking or shutting down the course (which would have cost the company thousands in refunds), Freya improvised a solution. She called the owner on speakerphone, walked him through the visual inspection via video link, and then meticulously re-torqued four loose cable sleeves herself using a manual winch—a tool she had only watched YouTube tutorials on the night before.