Summers in between semesters can be hard. To avoid spending the entire three months watching Netflix in your childhood bedroom, you need to find something to do! Getting an internship and making money while you gain valuable hands on job experience. However, acquiring the fabled “payed internship” is MUCH easier said than done. And a girl’s gotta make some money somehow! A good compromise between either spending your summer flipping burgers or sleeping all day is to get a job with a local summer camp. Working with children can be a reward of its own, but it’s definitely no easy task. Here are 10 things you probably know if you worked this past summer as a beloved camp counselor.
1) Children have WAY too much energy.
If only I had a fraction of the energy that some of my campers had! Running around and playing tag just isn’t as fun when you are older than 8.
2) You never want to have kids (or at least until you can afford to pawn them off onto someone else for half the day at a camp like this).
They say working with children is the best form of birth control! It can be so true, except for when you meet that one kid who is so sweet, they make you reconsider.
3) Snacks are the most important thing, ever.
98% of the questions I was asked this summer were, “What’s for snack today?”
4) There’s always going to be that one kid, that kinda makes you want to rip your hair out.
No matter how good the week is, their will always be a bad child in the bunch, the one that makes you worry for the future generation of America.
5) You probably enjoyed crafts more than any of the actual campers did.
Coloring is awesome! I still have some artwork I created this summer hanging on my fridge at home.
6) You lived for the gossip that you and the other counselors would share.
No one spills gossip like camp counselors. Agonizing over particularly rowdy students together is so therapeutic.
7) You learned how to grab a crowd’s attention really fast.
Clapping, whistling, or simply just screaming, you were able to get your group together at a moment’s notice. Makes you wonder if these skills could be applied to any career field…
8) You probably didn’t get enough sleep.
With most camps starting as early as 8:00 am, who has time for sleep?
9) You definitely did NOT getting paid enough for all the things you had to do.
From cleaning up huge messes, to handling temper tantrum you’ve done it all. Sure you could be making a bigger paycheck at almost any fast food restaurant, but you do it because you love your job, right?
10) Even after all the craziness, you still miss it!
Despite all the tiredness and stress, you’ll always miss the amazing people you met and want to come back next year.