For two years, I had the pleasure of living at Holiday Lake 4-H Educational Center, working as a Summer Staff member and High Ropes instructor. I grew up being a part of the program, camping for one week every summer with Campbell County 4-H, so becoming a Summer Staff member was a dream come true. While it is a job that you don't do for the monetary gain, I learned so much more about myself and about life in general through serving the many counties that utilized our services. These lessons are irreplaceable, and are things I am very thankful for. Let's dive right into some of the things I learned as a full-time Summer Staff member.
1. The Perks of Conquering a Fear
When I first started to show interest in working as a member of Summer Staff, I was terrified of heights. A year into my Teen Apprentice Experience in high school, I decided to work with the High Ropes instructors and attempt to face my fear. The year after that I was hired as one of the new instructors. I will never be able to convey how proud (and how exhausted) I was when climbing the Giant's Ladder and hooking into the course. It was not as frightening as I thought it would be, and I immediately felt at home. For the next two years, I focused on learning as much as I could about the equipment and about the course, and I am now so proud to have gotten to learn about and teach about the best class a kid can take at camp. Helping them conquer their fears gave me so much satisfaction, and was truly a blessing. Not only did I get to help them, but I also gained a really amazing hobby out of it, and I will always be grateful for the chance that I took.
2. "It's not going to rain" and Other Jinxes
If my boss, affectionately referred to as Salmon, said "it's not going to rain," that was your first clue that it's going to rain. When it rains, that means that evening programs may not happen as planned or classes may need to be altered. What I learned from being jinxed in such a way is how to stay on my toes. As someone who desperately needed to have everything scheduled and planned out, it always challenged me to keep going when the plan was being changed. I had to become comfortable with pushing myself to be comfortable with discomfort. I also had to learn how to work cohesively with other staff members on creating back-up plans, and executing them as if the plan had never changed. Now in college, I am better about rolling with punches and still managing to pull off events or assignments that I probably shouldn't have been able to pull off. I officially added "professionally winging it, but in a good way" to my resume.
3. Some of the Best Friendships are Those You Don't Expect
It's true. Friendships that come out of absolutely nowhere are some of the most beneficial ones you could ever have. I met my 4-H best friend during my senior year of high school when I was Junior Camp Director for my county. She was a Teen Apprentice, and we chatted during her free time when I was working on administrative duties. Almost three years later and we are still absolute besties. She worked on Summer Staff as the other High Ropes instructor, and we were inseparable because of the amount of time we were spending together. The more time we spent together, the closer we became and the more comfortable we were with each other. I could never imagine not having Amp in my life, and I have my summer job to thank for it all. With that being said, I loved all of the staff in special ways, and their friendships are worth the world.
4. You Can Do Anything You Set Your Mind To
When considering what my favorite camp song is, my mind always went to "Dem Bones," a song telling the story of Adam and Eve that included a laundry-list of verses and a catchy chorus. It is a "skitoryong," a phrase we use to denote a skit-story-song combination. I never thought I would be able to learn all of the parts to it, and made it a goal of mine to lead it at at least one campfire. During my second summer, I did just that and let me tell you - it was liberating. Remembering most of the verses, only mistaking one of them and putting it in the wrong order, was something to be very proud of. It taught me that while something may seem impossible, with a lot of work you could accomplish it.
5. Being Silly and Being Dedicated Are the Heart of It All
Being an introvert, it took me a while to warm up to the idea of being silly in front of a bunch of children. Eventually I did and it's something that overall made me feel more comfortable in my own skin. This gave me the confidence in myself to be comfortable in a comedy group tap club here on campus that I became a part of the following academic year after my first summer at camp. Accepting myself was something I desperately needed to become better at, and my job helped with that immensely. Thankfully, I had a great group of college-aged kids that were right there with me, ready to make fools of ourselves for the entertainment of the kids. Even if that meant we had to dress up and act like the characters in popular children's movies and cartoons I've never heard of. We also were dedicated to doing whatever it took for the kids to have a good week, so when the "Poopbusters" squad was called for over the radios to unclog all of the toilets in the girl's bathhouse, we jumped into action (thankfully we are now disbanded as the girl's bathhouse is being renovated). Something can be said about college students who are willing to go to those lengths for children, and I'm glad to have met a bunch of ladies who found humor in some of the worst work we could have possible have had to do. It was all worth it.
While there are many other reasons I think working on Summer Staff was the most beneficial thing I have ever done for myself, these are the highlights. I urge all college students to work at least one summer doing something such as this, working for a group that advocates for something worthwhile for another group. For us, we advocated a safe environment for children to try new things and have a great experience 4-H camping, and I believe we were rather successful at doing so. Changing the lives of children is something that warms my heart, and reminds me of all of the great things our staff has done for the betterment of the program we all wholeheartedly believe in. We carry these nicknames with us for life, and they become the better version of yourself that you are trying to achieve as a person. By joining this program we pledged our heads to clearer thinking, our hearts to greater loyalty, our hands to larger service, and our health to better living for our club, our community, our country, and our world for life.
Little Duck, out.
