Kids go to summer camp for at least one of three reasons. 1) Their parents need to get them out of the house so that they can live their lives for a few hours. 2) Kids need to get out of the house and live their lives for a few hours. 3) They’ve found their real life home away from home and summer is incomplete without it.

For me, it was usually a combination of the first two, and it wasn’t until junior high that I truly identified my camp home.

Like anything, with camp, you only get out what you put into it. So maybe I hadn’t really appreciated summer camp for everything it is until I started working as CIT. Or maybe I just hadn’t found it yet––whatever it is. Either way, I have been able to do a lot of soul searching during my summers. And I have learned way more from camp than I have at any other job (or arguably, in any classroom).

In order to work at a summer camp a person has to be crazy enough to get up at the crack of dawn five days a week, spend their entire day in the heat, with human beings that are way younger them, trying to ensure that all parties involved have the best day of their lives.

Camp is fun because we make it fun. That may mean that we make up a hybrid game of Capture the Flag with water balloons and 17 different rules that don’t make any sense at all; or that we have a “mystery art project” that has no order and all of the art supplies when we don’t have enough time to plan for the day. Regardless of the circumstances, everyone is going to enjoy themselves (staff included) so long as they are just as excited about it as they want everyone else to be.

Part of what makes it such a great learning experience is that camp is the epitome of organized chaos. You always have to plan for something to go wrong, and it requires some serious ability to think on your feet. You can’t get too attached to your plans or you’ll never be able to get anything done. So much of camp is learning to accept things as they come and roll with the punches. It really makes you stronger, more flexible, and much more engaged in what is happening in front of you rather than what’s happening in your head.

The kinds of relationships that you develop at camp are unlike any other. This goes for the campers as well as the staff. Camp is supposed to be the place where you can be 100% unapologetically yourself, and not get judged for it. You’re supposed to get out of your comfort zone and try new things, otherwise you’re not growing or really experiencing camp for all that it is intended to be. Camp friends are forever friends because they play a direct part in that growth, whether we think about it at the time or not.

Not only do we get close because we are forced to get out or our shell and reveal our true selves to our co-counselors, but also we are forced to work together as a team to make it all come together. This is humbling and it allows us to learn about our other teammates. We work best when we know how everyone around us works; this goes for our campers too.

Camp requires you to give 100% of yourself to it, for its greater purpose. Maybe you work at camp because you miss being a camper yourself, or maybe it’s because you want to be a part of what makes camp so special to a new generation of kiddos making your home their home. Whatever the reason, you get to be a part of something that is way bigger than yourself and it creates a new sense of purpose that you may not experience in your real life.

I have spent more than a decade of my life at the same day camp. Because of this, I have been able to figure out who I am and be confident with that. Hopefully, I’ve been able to help others be confident with who they are as well. That’s really what camp is all about. Besides the experience and the and the mental and emotional growth, it’s so important that people leave their camp feeling more confident in who they are than when they came into it.

I’m really very fortunate to have worked with some of the most remarkable people over the last few years (especially this summer) who, whether they knew it or not, have directly impacted my life in the most positive of ways and have helped me be as close to the best version of myself as I can be.