Reflections of a 19-year old first-timer

As everyone began to sing “Happy Birthday”, I felt my face start to burn crimson. I didn’t know what was coming next. Soon the entire camp staff had switched to “Skip around the room, skip around the room, we won’t shut up ’til you skip around the room!”

Then, a pause: I was supposed to leap up from my table and actually begin skipping around the room, to the beat of everyone banging on the tables and chanting, “Let’s see her skip, let’s see her skip!”

The more I hesitated at my table, the louder they chanted. Finally, I rose to the challenge and began skipping around the dining hall, regretting that my 19th birthday had to fall on the second day of Staff Week. I knew virtually nobody and felt embarrassed for my lack of knowledge of the camp traditions.

The next morning at flagpole, having recovered from the near-fatal birthday skip, I was making conversation with a more experienced counselor. “It’s an on-off switch,” he said.

I just nodded, not realizing the wisdom of his words. I was too busy taking in the unfamiliar surroundings, learning the schedule and the rituals, and trying to remember hundreds of campers named Adam, Rachel, Sarah, Daniel and David. I’ve never been to any kind of summer camp, and even though I was staff, it felt like regression. I looked around at flagpole that morning at the sleepy campers in their pajamas.

I wondered to myself: where am I?  

This thought stuck with me during Staff Week and the first several weeks of camp. It continues to occur to me as we finish our second session. Sometimes I answer the question for myself literally:

You’re at a Jewish summer camp, buried deep in the woods, or

You’re in the pottery shed, trying to corral 12 nine-year-olds kids into making pinch pots.

During these moments, I don’t usually have much time for self-reflection, as I’m thrust back into the intense day-to-day schedule that makes camp unique.

The clanging bell tells us when to change “activity periods,” evoking memories of school. Abbreviated, they’re called “acts,” which sounds more like show time. On the first act of the first full day of camp, my stomach was churning as I entered the pottery shed. I felt unprepared and unskilled.

But when the bell rang, something flipped: the on-off switch. It was time to be “on.” I started cutting slabs while making conversation with the kids, explaining how we pound out clay.

As an arts specialist, my day-to-day routine rotates between “acts” in pottery, arts and crafts, dance, and drama. I picked up some new skills, like tie-dying, leading drama games, and recycling clay. But the pacing of the day can sometimes get overwhelming. After a long morning, I walked toward the playhouse to teach drama to a huge group of 14-year-old boys. My mood was at a low. We started playing a game called “Questions” and the more inappropriate their questions got, the harder I laughed. They were full of life and spirit and I was completely uplifted.

I left the playhouse after that period with my mood improved, thinking, where am I?

Answering this question became a personal challenge. Could I be somewhere new every day, even within the isolated camp setting? I realized that I could be in the playhouse, teaching drama with another specialist. Or, I could be with my cabin even when I had a period off, trying something new like ziplining, letting the wind rush through my hair. I could also be with the arts staff, bonding as we learned a new bracelet stitch or cleaned the perpetually dirty arts and crafts shed. Each of these places and groups contributed something different to my experience.

Sometimes I tried to answer my question aloud or with other staff members. I had a long conversation with one of the Israeli staff members about the expectations we came with and how those had changed. We were both looking for deeper connections with other people, hard to find within the craziness of the schedule. Although we came from different places, we both felt a little bit lost here.

We’re still trying to find our way, asking where are we?

And so the answer changed as my workday progressed. I saw the truth behind that counselor’s first words to me: when you’re “on,” you have to be with the kids in every sense of the word, asserting yourself, aware of them and your surroundings. But when you’re “off,” you’ve stepped away from the kids and there’s time to relax and worry about yourself.

As a rising college sophomore, summer camp is a new environment where I sometimes feel out of place or out of touch. For campers and staff who have spent nearly every summer of their lives here, every ritual, every work wheel, every gravel path feels familiar.

The differences in our experiences make for interesting conversation, which often begin with someone asking me: “So, what do you think of your first color war?” My answers are usually different than what they would think, because of the unfamiliarity that these events hold for me. Naturally, any tight-knit community, especially camp, has its inside jokes, strange traditions, and different names. As the days pass, I’m learning the Hebrew and English names for everything, learning the cheers for my unit, and learning how to keep flipping that on-off switch.

The second session is coming to a close. As I ask myself where am I? I keep finding different answers.