Essay/Term paper: My summer as a counselor in traing at camp morasha

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Book Reports

My Summer as A Counselor In Traing at Camp Morasha


Over the past few years, I have overcome many challenges. But the one
that stands out in my mind the most occurred this past summer while I was
working as a Counselor-in-Training at Camp Morasha. I, along with 40 other
people my age, was assigned to bunks of kids ranging from ages eight to fifteen.
I can still remember looking up at the list and seeing that I had been assigned
to a bunk of nine and ten year olds. I felt violated because I felt that I
deserved a bunk of older kids, not a bunk full of little children who had never
heard of personal hygiene. After all, I had been a camper in this camp for
seven years, much longer than most of the other C.I.Ts. I almost quit on the
first day, when I saw that the counselor that I had been assigned to work with
did not intend on doing anything besides sleeping.
Although I usually enjoy working with young children, this was not my
idea of how to enjoy a summer vacation. But I decided to perservere, hoping to
be switched to another bunk. Alas, no such switch came, and I was driven to the
brink of insanity by these innocent looking young devils. These kids saw
nothing wrong with playing sports inside the bunk (and breaking three windows
while doing so), going weeks without showering, or with not going to sleep.
I soon realized that however insane these kids seemed to be, they were
not as unreasonable as I had originally thought. They just had to be given
suitable reasons or alternatives. And it was up to me to come up with these
reasons and alternatives. I knew that I could not adhere to conventional wisdom
while dealing with these kids, so I tried to be a little creative. I taught
them card games, which they ended up enjoying more than indoor baseball and
hockey. The showering problem was solved when I promised anyone who showered an
extended bedtime. Never before had I seen ten year olds stand in line for over
an hour in order to take a shower. A few of them even came to the realization
that it is nice to be clean and smell nice too, and they began to wear deodorant.
But they still saw nothing wrong with going to sleep well past midnight. I was
beginning to lose hope when I oveheard one camper saying that he wanted to be
taller. Since all of the kids loved basketball, I assumed that all of them
wanted to be taller. So that evening, I asked them when they thought they grew.
The most common answer was "while eating", which didn't surprise me. When I
told them that one grows while sleeping, they got ready for bed in a span of 30
seconds, and from that point on, no one objected to going to sleep at 9:00.
I was glad when the summer was over, and it was not because I got my
paycheck (which left a lot to be desired). It was because I was able to take a
challenge, a challenge that had driven some of my friends to quitting, and
overcome it. I am sure that I will face many more challenges at Cornell
University, and I look forward to overcoming them there.