Camp Counsel

“You’ll get to use a walkie talkie,” Kelsey said. “Being the full-day general counselor is a big ask, and our offering it to you means we trust you a lot.”

It was a cold June day during staff training week at Cedar Lake Camp. Back in the school year, Kelsey was Professor Kilduff, my 11th grade drama teacher. She had recruited me to work at her summer camp as half-day general counselor and half-day music production assistant.

Now we were on a first-name basis, and she was promoting me. I’d take over bigger tasks like interfacing with campers and creating schedules when the more senior counselors, Kali and Emma, had days off. Kelsey asked, “How would you feel about that?”

Most of the other counselors were college students. I had gone to summer camp my whole life, but this would be my first job. I overrode my fears and said, “Yes.”

Learning From Dad

To help prepare me, my dad told me that his first jobs picking blueberries and washing dishes taught him something important about being a good employee.

“You can’t make things harder for your boss,” he explained. “They won’t trust you with the things you need to do. You have to make everything as easy as possible for whoever you work for.”

My first week of being a counselor, I had so many questions for the higher-ups, but my dad’s advice kept me quiet.

I was in charge of 10 campers, all girls going into 7th grade. I had to get the kids to different activities, and at first I’d message Emma and Kali asking when and where my 10 needed to be. Often, I didn’t hear back, so I used my best judgement. That meant my campers were sometimes late and sometimes impressively early.

My first general counselor days included menial tasks like sorting and delivering mail. I would text Kali, “I’m done with the mail, what should I do now?” She would respond tersely, “Help with prep for the evening program,” like I was supposed to know that.

Before Kali’s first day off, she gave me the rundown of everything I needed to do as senior counselor. I took notes on my phone.

The next day, at lunch, campers started swarming me, asking, “Where are the cleaning scores? Did you give us cleaning scores? Which bunk is going first?”

I had forgotten that after the kids clean their bunks, I give them a score on a chart on their cabin door. The bunk with the highest score gets to eat lunch first. And I hadn’t given cleaning scores.

I inspected and scored the bunks after lunch, but the tween girls protested, “Why are you inspecting us now? It’s so dirty!”

When Kali returned the next day, she said, “I heard you forgot about cleaning scores.”

“Yeah, I didn’t have it written down, and it slipped my mind!” I confessed, hoping she would brush it off.

“Then don’t worry about doing them today. I got it,” she said. I was having responsibilities taken away from me before my eyes! I thought about my dad’s wisdom again—my bad memory had made Kali’s work harder today. I wanted her to keep trusting me as an employee: Had I blown it?

Learning by Doing

As I saw how the camp worked and got to know everyone, I took more initiative. I noticed when the inspection charts taped to the bunk doors were looking full, and made copies to hang up.

Emma thanked me for that. I finally felt like I was earning the faith she, Kali, and Kelsey had in me at the beginning of the summer.

I also learned how to communicate with sad pre-teens. One girl was frustrated at her bunk’s counselors for saying she had to eat when she simply didn’t feel the need to. She repeated, “They can’t make me!” while I nodded, listening.

Eventually, I made a deal with her. “I’m not going to make you eat, but what if you just come get in the food line? Is that OK?”

My skill set had expanded in just five weeks, in part just by bringing my memories of being 12 to the job.

When it was our turn to be served, she took a full plate and headed for her table. I did a mental fist pump for helping this camper listen to her body without ordering her to do anything.

Five weeks into the summer, in the middle of July, I moved into a new bunk, with some new and some familiar campers. In the first two days, I sat with three different crying kids. One girl was being teased for her mannerisms by the other girls in the cabin. I offered to talk to the girls who were teasing her. She promised that if it got any worse, she would ask me to approach them, but now she felt alright on her own.

Another was homesick and said the counselors picked her out specifically to yell at during cleanup and chores time. “I can’t help it, I’m just not a clean person! And I really want to be home right now, and that makes me not want to do anything,” she said. Her sniffling calmed as she talked.

I felt a spike of guilt, because I reminded her to clean almost every morning. I told her, “I will do better about that, now that I understand. I’ll talk to the other counselors too.” She went back to bed calmly.

The third camper was worried about a friend who had joked about self-harm. We sat by the lake talking for so long that I missed my own therapy session phone call. This camper strongly reminded me of myself at 12—worrying about my friends’ dangerous behavior and my inability to help. I got to tell them everything I had wanted to hear.

“Whatever your friend is working through is hard to talk about with anyone, even someone as close as you are to her. You really can’t blame yourself for it. The fact that you are so worried shows how much you care about her! She might need space before she wants to feel that. And if you want, I can talk to Emma or Kelsey if you truly believe she is hurting herself.”

When we walked back to the bunk, I reassured my camper that I would always be willing to talk if they needed it. We continued spending unscheduled time together, them doing henna on their legs while I read my book. They told me later in the summer that their friend was doing better.

This was all in contrast to my first week, when I had to take an extremely homesick girl to Kelsey’s office because I didn’t know what to say to her. My skill set had expanded in just five weeks, in part just by bringing my memories of being 12 to the job.

Learning to Get Help

As the summer drew to a close, Kali enlisted me to help write the song in a competition called Color War. The camp was divided into two teams that competed in various challenges, mostly athletic, but also writing and performing a song. Kali sent me some lyrics and a past Color War song in a Vimeo link.

Our team name was Emunah, a Hebrew word meaning faith. The song had to be around six minutes long but catchy, and it had to incorporate the value of emunah. And 120 people had to learn and sing it.

I didn’t ask Kali any questions. I reorganized the lyrics she gave me and changed the structure and melody, then sent her a voice memo of what I’d scraped together.

Kali said my version was too slow and needed work. I had plenty of experience writing songs, but I didn’t know what she wanted. I feared I was letting her down again.

With only one day until Color War began and nothing written, I realized that Emunah had another songwriter on the team. Tali was Israeli, and she’d been a camper here for years. She would know exactly what a Color War song needed to be.

I told Tali what I’d been saddled with, and she agreed to help. We workshopped the song for a full day. The melody I’d written solidified when I had to teach it to Tali. She added verses, including one in Hebrew. I rearranged the song’s structure. We spent the next day tracking a demo at the camp’s small recording studio.

Then the 120 members of the Emunah team, 40 of whom were Israeli, gathered to learn the song. With lyric sheets in their hands, and some voices louder than others, our campers began to pick up the melody.

I got chills listening to them practice. Although the song was literally about faith, the lyrics also broadly described community. Hearing it, I realized we were celebrating the community I had loved as a kid at camp and that I had helped create this summer.

At the competition, Emunah performed our song first. I counted off, played the intro on my guitar, and it went by in a blur. The campers sang loud and poured their hearts into it.

Kali approached me with tears in her eyes, and said, “Jinx, thank you. That was beautiful, the best Color War song I’ve ever heard.”

Emunah won Color War, in part because of Tali’s help with the song. I was proud of her and of myself for recognizing the right person to ask for help. I reflected on how much I’d learned at camp. Over the course of the summer, I learned to plan. As my dad had advised, I made life easier for my bosses by anticipating problems and taking initiative. And the better I got at fulfilling my responsibilities, the more stress fell away. Empathizing with my campers by remembering what I needed at their age showed me my own wisdom.

And I finally know how to use a walkie-talkie.