Lessons Learned at Camp

When you work at a summer camp, you learn a lot about yourself and others.  I thought I'd share some of what I've learned since arriving at Pillsbury in this post.

• Once one begins to appreciate the small things, it's easier to appreciate life in general.
• Working with kids can wear one out physically and mentally.
• There are moments when a kid starts to cry and you just don't want to deal with crying kid(s), but you do only to see a smile that brightens your day just a little.
• Some days, when it's peaceful on camp, you love the time to be quiet and be alone.  On other peaceful days at camp, you actually miss the chaos of kids everywhere.
• Sometimes a kid tries to throw you a ball, and it hits you in the face, and a week later the same kid gets whacked in the face by a ball.  Having experienced getting hit in the face with a ball then allows you to understand how the kid feels when it happens to them.
• Sometimes the kids are the reason you get through those rough days where you're worn out and all you want to do is sleep.  They smile, laugh, tell jokes, and are often better at being themselves without censoring what they think, feel and say than we as adults are.  Maybe as adults, we need to learn how to be child-like, and be the person that doesn't hide their rough edges.

Life

I've been finding myself spending a little less time in the kitchen cooking lately.  We have a new here staff member who started here at Pillsbury in mid-February and who has been sharing the cooking duties with me.  This is nice for both of us since neither one has to do all of the cooking.

We've also developed a schedule of who has which day off, who is with the after school kids, who does homework with boarders, and who needs to work on cleaning what.  As a group, we all have been working on the information about different areas of camp that will be put together into the policies and procedures.

Today it actually got up to 61 degrees here, which was great especially since it was my day off.  I spent some time outside with a book reading, which felt great.  It was nice to have that time to get away and be alone while also knowing that everything else was being taken care of.

I'm glad to know that I'll have every Tuesday off until the summer begins, when my schedule will be more scrambled.