In today’s society, the words “college” and “internship” are very closely related. The common idea is that once one is a college student, he or she needs to get an internship, at least for the summer after freshman year, if not before. What I have found in my quest to “get my name out there” is that getting a job as a freshman is, well, nearly impossible. All of these big companies that anyone would want on his or her resume only want students with a highly impressive resume, one they do not have only after a year of college. But, if they cannot get these internships, how are they supposed to build up that resume? Catch 22.
I have a handful of friends working this summer. Waitressing, scooping ice cream, lifeguarding, working in retail, and some were even lucky enough to land that internship, but the reality of it is, they’re fetching coffee for the summer. In the beginning of my freshman year, I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do for the upcoming summer. I could try and stay in the DC area to try to work for some big news station, I even had friends offer to put a good word in for me at the magazines they interned at, but none of that felt right. I didn’t WANT to spend my first summer free from college drowned in more work or being someone’s personal assistant, for no pay whatsoever. I wanted to do something that makes me happy.
So, at 19 years old, I am going back to sleep away camp for my eleventh summer.
My camp is unique in that to be eligible to get hired as a counselor, one has to have completed her first year of college. While many of my friends have been telling stories of their campers for three years already, I am still anxiously awaiting my time to care for crazy teenagers for the summer in the best place on earth.
I can’t tell you the amount of times I have gotten a dirty look or a question from a member of my family asking why I continue to return to camp. “Shouldn’t you be getting a real job?” they ask. I mean, like, I could, but I don’t want to yet. I am not ready to let this part of my life go.
After much convincing and many debates in the group chat, my friends and I have decided to return to camp, together, to enjoy the experience of being a sleep away camp counselor. There are a slew of studies online that prove why this job enhances your life, why it looks better on a resume than other jobs, and why it is the best place to be as a young adult, so I won’t bore you with those details, but I do have to say, it’s all true.
Being a camp counselor will teach me so much about others and myself. For the first time in my life, I will have to be a teacher, whether that’s teaching my campers how to respect each other, how to apply makeup, or how to perfect their dancing skills. I will be 13 girls’ “go-to” person when they’re sad or angry, or when they want to gossip about last night’s social. I will have to problem solve for a ton of new little girls whose lives I am not yet familiar with. These girls will hold a special place in my heart. They will be there for a milestone in my life, I will look at them like my little sisters, and with their help, I will be able to see myself in a new light. Taking care of others can truly open my eyes to how I act or how I can improve myself. Being a camp counselor might not teach me how to write the perfect feature story, or how to write a broadcast script, but it will teach me life lessons I cannot learn anywhere else. This is why I am so confident in my decision to spend another summer in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania.
So please, do not ask me why I am returning, or ask me why I don’t have a “real job,” because this is the realest job in the world and I am proud to be a role model for my future campers and make memories that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
