Pre-Camp mode

So tonight is the night before I go to camp. I am staying in St. Paul at Mike 'Ice' Eckberg's house. I'm so excited I can't really go sleep yet, and I've been having so much fun with this blog so far I thought I would get started on my quest to make sense of camp for myself and the masses. Speaking of the masses, I have no idea if anyone is really even reading this. I feel like Happy Harry Hard-on in the move "Pump Up the Volume" (great movie) when he is talking about his early radio days and had no idea if anyone was listening. Then again, I'm listening and that's what counts.

When people find out that I am working at a summer camp this summer, I get a wide range of responses. Some think that it is great that I am doing something I love, some think I should get a 'real job', and some are jealous. In general though few people really understand why I am doing it. Most think I am doing it because it will be fun. That isn't necessarily untrue, however there are lots of fun jobs out there, and in fact I would say I have reached a point where there are more fun things I could do out there. So I had an idea. Each summer I have to "re-apply". I have to fill out an application and do an interview. At this point the process is somewhat of a formality in that they directors know me well enough to know if they would like to hire me or not. However, it is a good opportunity to touch base and let them know of my ideas for the summer and where I see myself. There are 8 questions you are supposed to answer on the application for returnign staff members but I really just answered the ones that I felt applied to me. The question I spent the most time answering was: "Why do you want to come back to Camp Lincoln this summer"? I felt like by letting you read that, maybe you woudl have an idea what it has become about for me. It may not all make sense though hopefully throughout the summer some of it will make more sense. Here it is:


I am looking forward to coming back for a few reasons. Recently I had been debating whether or not to re-apply and I was trying to figure out what I was getting from camp at this point. Realistically I have sacrificed a lot to work at camp. I’ve passed up opportunities to work less, make more money, have more time for fun, and travel. I also recognize that in the past I have gained many things; learned new activities, met loads of friends from all over the world, got away from AZ for the summer, had amazing days off, got to work with some great kids and really get to know them, and made a little scratch in between. However as time has gone on many of the negatives have become more pronounced; I could be making a significant amount of money SAT tutoring or doing a math related internship, the work has become inherently harder and more demanding, and every year is one more consecutive summer that I haven’t been able to do anything else. Likewise many of the original things I got from camp don’t apply anymore; I don’t really get to do activities, I don’t get to know kids that well, days off are okay at best, although I am making more than I used to as I come on graduation I need money more than ever, lastly for the first time last summer I didn’t really make any single new friends, not real ones anyway and most of the friends I have left seem to be moving on.

So why have I decided to reapply? While I have been thinking about this I have also for the first time started to recognize is a real way what I have gotten in the long term from camp. Even though I had talked about this before and thought I knew it, I hadn’t really had myself as convinced. Based on some experiences I’ve had in the past summer and the recent months I have started to realize just how many skills I have really learned from camp and where those skills are leading me. Partially through observing others and partially through my own experiences I have seen how good I have gotten at leading a group of people, adults or children. I have realized how much better of a public speaker I am than almost any of my friends and probably all of them. I’ve realized how much it has helped my teaching skills which among other things has helped me become a successful tutor (at least in terms of results and client satisfaction). I’ve also realized that honestly I’ve never been anything but successful at a job or program that I have tried to succeed in. The difference however is that camp is the only long term job that I have managed to stay motivated and passionate about. Because of these things I have been thinking that as I start thinking about future careers I want to look at positions that combine the skills and as well as things I like about working at camp. I have become increasingly interested in some form of youth, adult, or family recreation.

The other big motivating factor is the appeal of finally doing the same job for a 2nd consecutive year. In my first four years I had 4 different positions. I always felt like by the time I really learned how to do the job the summer was over and I found myself doing something different next time. This has had its appeals as I learned a lot fast but it never gave me the chance to really excel at a position, at least this is how I’ve felt. I’ve spent 4 years doing good and none doing great. The closest I came was as a head counselor but even then I still had enough adjustments to make that it took me a session. I really want to for once just hit the ground running and really do well the entire summer because I’ll actually know what I am doing for a change. I feel like I was pretty prepared to be a DD last year but still had some things to work on. I focused on some of my mentoring skills as well as just learning the ropes and came a long way. I’d like to apply that this summer and take real ownership of a division, something I wasn’t able to do mentally last year because I knew Kevin was there. I knew that even if I failed that really the buck stopped with him, not me, I was his responsibility. For me knowing that my I lack ownership of my failures makes me lack pride in my accomplishments, it doesn’t feel like they count. This year I think I will be great and I will be able to take pride in that. I feel like it has been a four year process but my view of why I want to come back to camp has been changing over time. At this point it is coming from a very professional point of view, camp will always be fun for me, but now more than every I see it as a job on the path toward a future career.

So hopefully that will add some level of insight. I hope what you get out of it is this: what camp means to me has changed every year I have been there and likely will continue to. Thinking back to my first summer at this time seems so long ago. I was a very different person then and camp has been a big part of that. As a child and into early adulthood the quality of summer is defined by two things; how much fun you have and the friends you make. If that is the metric then that first summer was the best summer of my life. I had the time of my life, met amazing people who despite the fact that I don't keep in touch with these days I will never forget, and I was pretty good at my job. What I want now in my position at camp is so much based on that summer. As a division director I want above all two things; I want my staff to have at least close to as much fun as I had and I want them to be better at their job then I was. I want so badly for them to look back years from now and think that it was the best summer of their life and that they did a good job. I imagine the next couple months of this blog will revolve around me trying to do that.

Jo27ey