This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Northeastern chapter.
If you’re like me, every year you’ve spent the first weeks of June packing up your life into duffel bags and moving into the wilderness for the summer. Chances are when a song comes on the radio, you often forget the real lyrics but only remember the words to the ‘camp version.’ You probably follow @campgrlproblems on Twitter, and have more inside jokes than anyone could ever keep track of. If any of this sounds familiar, you probably went to summer camp.
When I was nine years old, my parents dropped me off in Naples, Maine for a 3 ½ week session at an all–girls overnight camp. After falling in love with camp instantly and going back for one month the following summer, I continued returning to camp for 8 weeks each year until I was fifteen and too old to be a camper anymore. Upset at the thought of not spending another summer at my newfound second home, I returned to camp two years later as a counselor and continued to work there for four years. After ten years of returning to camp from the ages of 9 to 20, I can truly say that my experience at camp helped make me the person I am today.
Unfortunately, as I discovered in my last summer, it is near impossible to be a camp counselor forever. While it is one of the greatest jobs I’ve ever had, I had to depart camp–world to get a ‘real job’––a dreaded term that many camp veterans are unfortunately familiar with. As a graphic design major, working at a camp and teaching sports didn’t exactly relate to my chosen career path. However, I found that my time both as a camper and a counselor taught me many invaluable lessons that can be helpful to any college student, no matter what your field of study.
The first thing camp taught me right off the bat was how to deal with living away from home. At the age of nine I was put into a cabin with ten other girls my age, all of who were strangers at the time, and three college–aged counselors who I would be living with for the next month. I was on my own to make new friends, clean up around the bunk and essentially take care of myself for the first time in my life. While I was clearly much less mature as a 9–year–old than as an 18–year–old college freshman, I found that many of the challenges posed by my first year of college I had already dealt with in my first year of camp. It can be hard living away from home for the first time and learning to adapt your routine to a new place with new people, but living at camp for eight summers prior to freshman year made the transition that much smoother.
In addition to learning to be independent, camp also allowed me the opportunity to interact with both campers and counselors from different backgrounds who lived all over the country. While I grew up in Maine, I have camp friends from New York, Maryland, Florida and even as far away as England and Australia! Sometimes, at camp and at college, you’ll be living with people you love, and others who you may not love so much, but being able to make the best of any living situation will make a huge difference in your overall experience. Making new friends who come from all different places while also being able to live with those people can be a challenge, but being at camp for ten years helped me learn to adapt and live comfortably with new people.
Like I said before, teaching lacrosse and playing with kids for two months doesn’t exactly fall under the umbrella of ‘design experience,’ but many of the qualities that make a great camp counselor are also traits that any employer would look for in a candidate. My camp directors put a lot of emphasis on responsibility, flexibility and attention to detail. When your job is to care for children, it’s important to have fun, but also to be a positive and responsible role model. Being able to think on your toes and react to any situation makes for a great camp counselor, or really any employee! The interpersonal and leadership skills that I learned from being a counselor continue to help me relate to my coworkers at jobs I’ve had post–camp.
USA Today recently ran an opinion piece on working at summer camps, and I couldn’t agree with the author more. Having the opportunity to be a role model for children while spending your summer in a beautiful setting and meeting people from all over the world is an invaluable experience that I believe anyone who has the opportunity should take advantage of. The people I’ve met at camp––both as a camper and a staff member––are still some of my closest friends, and because of camp, we will always share a special connection. While it may seem like just a summer job or an easy way to make money, working at camp is an amazing experience that can teach you lessons that will hold true throughout life, no matter where your road takes you!
{Images courtesy of The Parent Trap (1998), Choice Camps}