When I decided that I wanted to dedicate my summer to be a camp counselor, it was because I wanted to make a difference in a kid's life. I had no idea that the kids that I spent eight hours a day with for eight weeks would teach me so much. I ended the summer with new friendships, understandings, and a lifelong appreciation for the memories that I made. Here are a few things that camp life taught me:

Patience.

The entire summer, I was a counselor for seventh and eighth graders. Looking after and entertaining middle-schoolers was definitely not a simple task. We are all guilty of going through that phase where we argued about everything, knew we were right one hundred percent of the time, and acted as if nothing mattered to us at all. Patience was something that I had never really had a lot of until I worked at a summer camp. It wasn't that I was incapable of being patient, I had just never been in a setting that required me to work on this specific skill before. When you are responsible for fifteen pre-teens, patience is most definitely a virtue. After weeks of encouraging a camper to do something they never thought they could do, watching them finally accomplish it makes all of the blood, sweat, and tears (emphasis on the sweat) worth it.

Embracing Your Goofiest Self.

It definitely took some time to warm up to the idea of being silly and letting loose in front of a bunch of people. But, I did and it allowed me to feel more comfortable in my own skin. Accepting myself was something I desperately needed to work on, and this job helped more than I could have ever expected. Thankfully, I had a great group of people with me, ready to make fools of ourselves for the entertainment of the kids. Something can be said about people who are willing to go so far for children, and I'm so thankful to have met people who found humor in some of the most challenging work we will have ever had to do.

The "Fake It 'Till You Make It" Concept.

For all the things that camp counselors complain about, we all really love camp. Yes, it tests the bounds of human endurance in all forms. Sure, the number of things that go wrong on any given day, never ends. I definitely learned how many cups of coffee one human being is able to consume in a day. But at the end of the summer, once everything was said and done, there were tears and lots of them. Waking up with the sun every single morning and being outside all day every day can be grueling at times. Sometimes you just want to stay in bed, or sit down, or do absolutely anything else but play soccer for an hour or complete a high ropes course. But even on the most difficult days, you had to keep moving and do it with a smile on your face. These kids didn't want to be there all the time either, but they feed off of our energy, and if we were having a good time, they would too. Sometimes faking it can go a long way. (Especially when you have to pretend that a bee sting doesn't even phase you so that all of your campers don't freak out. Yep, that was fun.) Boundless enthusiasm was one of the most critical characteristics of being a successful counselor.

Camp has a funny way of making you find yourself when you don’t even realize you had been looking. I came out of my shell. I realized that I could voluntarily make a complete fool out of myself in front of a group of people. Working at a summer camp gives you a break from the real world for a little while. It gives you a break from having to wear makeup every day. It gives you a break from having to check your phone every two minutes. The memories that I made, the friendships that I developed, and the lessons that I learned will be close to my heart for the rest of my life. The summer that I spent as a camp counselor was the best summer of my life, and I would do it again and again.