10 for 2

“10 for 2” is a classic saying we have in the summer camp business. The saying means that campers wait ten months out of the year just to be at camp for two. To make the 2 happen, I am locked in the office world of sending emails, writing purchase orders, building excel spreadsheets, attending meetings, interviewing and hiring staff, calling field trips vendors, and all of the things that I never thought about happening in the background when I was a summer camp counselor in 2021! In fact, the start of my first off season in 2022-23, I looked out to the after-school care programing happening outside of my office with nostalgia for all the meaningful time I used to spend with kids as my main responsibility. Now it’s my second year as an assistant camp director! So why am I doing this again? Why am I doing the hard work of the 10 for the benefit of the 2?

Last year, I engineered the successful return of our teen Leaders-In-Training program since the pandemic. I was really stressed trying to fill up the program as summer approached. My camp director, Carrie Kee, created a list of camp alumni for me to reach out to, and I began making calls and leaving voicemails. I found out later that one of the teens who joined the LIT program did so because I made that call to her parent. I didn’t personally know her at the time. Now, I’m so glad I got to know that name because she turned out to be amazing. She was always down to help, volunteer, and participate. When the LITs finished cooking meals for children in hospitals for their volunteer project, she got her grandmother to drive her back to the Ronald McDonald House after the end of camp just to continue serving food. A lasting memory was a phone call away.

Like I said before, I make the field trips in the 10 off-season months. One week, the Unit Head of our older campers was out so I subbed in for him to supervise the field trip. We went to an indoor water park. The campers were ecstatic I was joining them and then dejected when I said I wasn’t going in the water with them for supervision purposes. Fortunately, I had 2 leadership team members with me. We arranged our watch shifts so we could each have at least half an hour to play with the campers. That’s when a camper who I looked after since 2020 and who is soon to age out of being camper told me that we would be racing down the tube slide with her two other friends. That tube slide is a memory I cherish dearly.

Admin work was not the reason why I decided to work in a Youth and Camp setting, but I have learned to appreciate it for being the medium that will create a tangible communal experience. Cold calls got a young teen to experience the meaning of leadership. Purchase orders and emails led me to have a final hurrah with my day 1 kids. These and many more tangible experiences that bring joy and growth for kids and adults alike start in the office but end in the memories of those who experience the magic of summer. The 10 makes the 2, and the 2 makes the 10 worthwhile.

So, whenever I worry that my work won’t make the direct impact I hope for, I look upon a post-it-note a counselor made for me. It says, “from start to finish you have to start in order to finish. If you show up, you’re winning.”