As a college student or young adult, you hear about how important your summers are. With time off of school, it’s the perfect time to work, get an internship, gain new skills, network, build your resumé, make progress! After all, you want to have a job lined up after graduation, don’t you?
Being a camp counselor doesn’t necessarily align neatly with these goals. The hours are long. The pay is nonexistent. Your supervisor is a man with a large nerf gun, cut-off jeans and a wolf t-shirt. Your ability to belt sing-along songs at the top of your lungs isn't helpful for your resumé.
You don’t necessarily learn new job skills like you do at an internship, but you indeed learn things. Most importantly, you learn about love.
Love can be tender; like the sight of a counselor comforting a homesick child, assuring them that even though their family may be far away, they are still cared for.
Love can be messy; like smearing peanut butter all over your face and armpits and dancing around purely for the intention of making children laugh.
Love can be loud; like a group cheer screamed at the top of your lungs until your voice is raw, or a group of 30 children singing that they love you a-deep-down-in-their-hearts.
Love can be soft; like a quiet conversation between a camper and counselor while a friendship bracelet is being made, or a small camper unexpectedly taking your hand as you walk through the night.
Love can be tough; like telling a dorm full of rowdy adolescent boys that if they don’t go to sleep right now you swear that they will be scrubbing toilets at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning.
Love can be heartbreaking; like learning that there are 14-year olds who go through more pain and heartache than anyone deserves, and that there’s little more you can do for them other than listen to their story and pray for them long after they leave.
Love can be heroic; like the sight of a fellow counselor cradling a boy who had just received 8 hornet stings in his arms and then running down a mountain and halfway across camp to the nurse’s station, all the while being stung himself.
Love can save you; like learning that despite all your mistakes, imperfections, and regrets, you can still find it within your heart to make a child happy. Your fellow counselors are no different, you all have flaws and carry your own scars. You sometimes bicker, misunderstand, and argue, but everyone around you is willing to give everything they have and more for a group of children they’ve only just met. It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.
Love is when someone else’s happiness becomes more important to you than your own.
It is not marketable. It is not a resumé-builder.
It is not one of Fortune 500’s most desirable skills. But it is deeply, deeply important.
If nothing else, summer camp is a place where love resides in abundance. “We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved.” – Mother Teresa
Carlo served at Camp AJ for the 2014 and 2015 summers. He is currently a student at the Ohio State University. Opinions expressed in volunteer reflections are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CAP or the Volunteer Program.
