The wind blasts past my face and fills the sails of the boats pacing behind the starting line, threatening to tip them into the shadowy water. I push my hair back from my face and look down at my stopwatch. Three seconds…two…one. The horn blows and four boats speed past the starting line, heading towards a distant buoy. My heart begins to pound as if it is going to burst out of my life jacket as I turn to watch my campers race across the lake.
When I think back to the summer of 2016, this is what I will remember.
Every summer that I decide to return to work at summer camp I begin preparing a defense of my job choice. “All my friends are going back” and “I enjoy working outside” are two common answers I throw out when questioned about my summer plans. I tend to have a long list of responses in order to please whichever kind of person cares to ask, be it a family member, a coach, a friend, or curious stranger.
To be quite honest, however, I am sick of it. I am sick of people saying that working at summer camp is not a real job. I am sick of crafting explanations to satisfy a summer camp skeptic rather than speaking to the real reasons I have returned to the north woods of Minnesota for ten summers. I am tired of dodging questions about résumé building and developing workplace skills and am ready to be proud of my work without feeling the need to defend it. So the next time someone inquires about my summer job I will simply tell them one story.
I worked as the sailing director at an all girls camp this past summer, and near the end of the first four-week session I took eight girls to a nearby boys camp to compete in a sailing regatta. With less than 24-hours notice about the regatta we had no time to practice, and although the stakes were extremely low (if not non-existent), I was nervous about how my girls would fare. After arriving at the lakefront we briefly went over the buoy course and explained the starting whistles before they rigged their boats and got on the water.
As soon as the boats took off I knew my nervousness was misplaced, though that could not keep my heart from pounding with excitement. My campers were in two different boats, and one group timed their start perfectly and shot out in front of the others, cruising to an early lead that they maintained throughout the race. I screamed and cheered as they crossed the finish line (three minutes ahead of the others in a twelve-minute race), and swelled with pride as I saw the smiles on their faces.
As the other three boats rounded the downwind buoy and trimmed their sails for their final stretch to the finish line, I finally understood how my parents have felt all these years watching me from the sidelines in my various sporting endeavors. My mom always claimed that it was harder to watch an intense game than play in it, and now I have to admit that I believe her.
Though a boat of boys finished in second, the two remaining boats, one from each camp, were right on top of each other, vying for third place. Both boats turned to sail on a better course to the finish line, but the boys were faster and pulled ahead. Yet just as the girls’ fate seemed sealed, a gust of wind rushed across the lake. With a quick adjustment of their sails my girls were flying with the gust and rapidly approaching their opponent.
“Go, go, go!” I screamed, too exhilarated to yell anything more constructive. Twenty feet from the finish and they pulled next to the other boat, and with inches to go they edged in front of the boys and across the finish line. My girls took third place, and I took a deep breath to calm down from all my overzealous shouting.
The campers had two more races and we placed first and third in each, and I could not have been more proud. At camp we like to abide by the words “win without boasting and lose without excusing,” but it would be a disservice not to boast at least a little about the day’s results.
When I got back to camp that evening I told my friend that I felt like a proud mom, and it did not take long for me to realize how unusual of a feeling that is for a twenty-one-year-old. Not just because I am not a parent, but because people my age are rarely given opportunities to oversee others’ endeavors. We are applauded for our individual academic accomplishments and extracurricular achievements but are seldom trusted to create those experiences for others.
So why work at summer camp? Because I got to live in an environment in which all experiences were shared, and where my worth depended on the smile on a child’s face rather than the words written on a résumé. I felt pride outside of my own accomplishments, and disappointment outside of my own failures. I learned to value other people’s happiness above my own and was better off because of it, and a job that taught me all that needs no more defending.
