I spent this past summer working for the City of Bozeman Parks and Recreation Department. After hearing that, the first thing you probably want to ask is "are you like Ron Swanson?" or "is your budget as bad as Pawnee?".

It may surprise you, but even though there are similarities to the Parks and Rec TV show and a real-life Parks and Rec Department, that was all fancy government stuff. My role is in fact quite different, I hold the title of Short-Term Recreation Leader, and I live at the bottom of the city government food chain. What this means is that I am usually unaware of much bigger problems the city is dealing with, and as a result I won't have the answer you're expecting, if you ask why the streets only get swept at a certain time, or why a certain subdivision was approved in a certain location, or why taxes can't be slashed (for what it's worth, your taxes pay my wage).

My job centers around working with kids, sort of in a day camp environment (except it's government work). I got to lead groups of children aged anywhere from 4-14 through a wide variety of Recreation Programs tailored to every interest, and even learn a thing or two myself along the way. Though it is tiring to have 30-40 little people in your face from morning to evening, it is also worth every second.

Here a a few things I have learned from being a Rec Leader this summer:

1. You become a part of your city. During the academic year, I find myself constantly commuting between my apartment and the MSU campus. While MSU has wonderful people and things to do, you often forget that Bozeman is much more than the buildings that make up our major university. Working in our many parks reveals a nearly different world, and I begin to actually branch out into the greater community.

2. History is pretty cool. When you work in the government, you learn a few things about the history of said government's area. For example: did you ever know MSU can credit its existence to a cattle drive up from Texas by Nelson Story? Also that the Story Mansion (built by Nelson) was one of the last fraternity houses to have an actual house mother? Or that East Gallatin Recreation Area (also known as Bozeman Beach) was once the site of a landfill? Or that the namesake of this town, John Bozeman, actually has more connections to the state of Georgia than the state of Montana? Or that a fair share of place-names throughout town are all buried in one section of Sunset Hills Cemetery (Baxter, Moser, Babcock, Story, Peach, Lindley, etc...). Bozeman is literally bursting with interesting bits of information.

3. Just because you don't know it, doesn't mean you can't teach it. Throughout this summer I have taught elementary and middle school kids how to skateboard, fly fish, play volleyball, tennis, basketball, and badminton...without having ever skateboarded, fly fished, played volleyball, tennis, basketball, or badminton. What you learn is that most of the kids you're with have next to no experience in the sport, and even your mediocre knowledge is still more than what they know right in front of you.

4. There is a language change. There can be as much as a 10 year age range in the kids I work with on a daily basis. After a couple months (and all of last year, with a similar program in Minneapolis) you begin to tell very clear differences between the ages. For example, there tends to be a bigger difference in behavior between 5 and 7 year olds than there is between 7 and 9 year olds, and middle schoolers are much more inappropriate than I remember. A big challenge is to talk at a level that someone who hasn't even been in kindergarten yet will understand, then just an hour later talk to somebody who is smack in the middle of puberty. With practice, this becomes much easier but it is easy to slip up occasionally and treat a 12 year old like they belong in 1st grade.

5. It's okay to be silly sometimes. Little kids funny bones are easy to tickle, and though it may seem embarrassing for a college student, you learn to just roll with it and act a bit immature just to appeal to their lighter side. Of course not without being at least a little serious, to show them who's in charge.

Overall, working in Parks and Recreation has been a fulfilling experience, and even though I may not return to the job next year for reasons relevant to my current area of study, the people-management and improvisational skills learned are certain to last a lifetime. But, I still can't explain to you why Bozeman keeps expanding south and west.