This summer will be my fourth working at the summer camp I went to as a child. While I’m at camp, I like to joke that my greatest skills include: getting any child, no matter what kind of tantrum they throw, into the pool for morning instructional swim; being able to get sixty girls showered in 40 minutes; making an incredibly creative costume out of the last 3 clean clothes that I have left.
I’m half-joking, but truthfully, camp has given me so many skills in life. Every year I hear my friends trying to decide what internship will look best on their résumé — and after the summer, I hear them complain about the boring internship they felt they had to do. I won’t lie: I know that when a lot of people hear that I am still going back to camp, they laugh in their heads thinking that I am wasting my time when I could be padding my résumé. So here is what I think of when I think of camp, and why it’s so much better than any other resumé booster!
This is me during an evening program I planned where campers would go to a “casino” and play games so they could win prizes.
Obviously, I had to wear a prom dress.
1. Program Planning
Every single day, campers rely on you to be the source of fun. Whether that is when their regular activities are cancelled because of rain or planning an evening program, you are the main source of entertainment. This is especially useful if you’re planning to go into business, where you will have to pitch ideas to a group. So instead of interning at a business where you will be fetching coffee for the guys who are coming up with the ideas, you will have hands on experience coming up with them yourself.
Me as a captain or leader of color war.
2. Leadership
At camp you will be in charge of a group of 12-14 kids, but you will also have to lead programs, activities — not just for kids, but also for your fellow staff. When you tell future employers that you are able to lead a group and you have had experience doing so, it will look so much more appealing than detailing another boring internship.
3. Teamwork
On the flipside, being a leader at camp means you are also expected to work with others cohesively. As a student, I was always told that those dreaded group projects would one day prepare me for the real world when I would have co-workers that I need to work with. Well, at camp you will actually be able to learn what it means to work as a team. You will probably have 2-3 other staff members in the cabin, as well as being expected to work with all the other staff to make sure that the campers have the best summer possible. Employers will be a lot more impressed when you say that you are able to work well in groups rather than telling a future employer that your internship did not include much interaction with others.
4. More Responsibility
At my camp, the older you get, the more responsibilities you are expected to have. As a fourth year staff member, I will be expected to help out the new and younger staff, as well as handle bigger problems on my own. There are a lot more positions that you can have as you get older, such as being a supervisor to a whole age group of kids. In most internships you are not expected to rise up, and you probably will not get more experience if you keep doing the same one summer after summer. At camp, the more years you go, the more impressive it looks.
This is the kind of creativity and costume making that you can only find at camp.
5. Creativity
Camp is all about being fun and goofy. It is about making someone’s summer special and doing it while wearing the most ridiculous costumes. There is no other place in the world I would want to spend my summers than a place that lets you be so unabashedly you. So if you want to have the summer of your life while getting experience that will be more meaningful than anything you could get at a regular internship camp is the place for you.
Here are my reasons for loving camp, and why I think it’s such a wonderful experience. Let me know what you think in the comments!
Image credits: Hannah Davidoff