The Newsy Neighbour
January Issue #111
Article provided by:Gaylene Smith of McBride Career Group
There is a job that I think every teenager or young adult in
Canada should work at least once in their high school or university lives:
summer camp staff. Working at summer camp is almost a rite of passage into
adulthood, in my mind. It prepares for future careers and is a preparation like
no other for parenthood. If you have not spent two sleep-deprived months with
children clinging to you like a pack of capuchin monkeys, you just haven’t
really been best prepared for adulthood. Parenting will come as a shock. (It
still is shocking even if you have spent seven summers at Camp Granada, but
perhaps a bit less) Camp prepares you for the sacrifices your body will need to
endure for the sake of your offspring. Packing children and their twig and rock
collections like a Sherpa; sticky hands touching you with what you hope is
marshmallow, going hours without a bathroom break and feeling like you might
just die from your bladder bursting. These are all things camp staff endure and
mature from. If you have never had to remove roasted marshmallow from a
screaming child’s hair, you have not been prepared for adulthood. If you don’t
have the experience of dealing with bed-wetters, homesickness and unexplainable
bouts of hyperactivity (and this is just from your fellow camp staff), you are
not prepared for adulthood. If you have not had the pleasure of tick and lice
checks and the joy of removing leaches of screaming, sunburnt, prepubescent
bodies, you are not prepared for adulthood. If you have never suffered through
the itch and pain of sunburnt, mosquito bit body parts, then you are not
prepared. If the thought of kids sugared up on red Kool-Aid doesn’t make you
break out in hives, you are not ready. If you don’t have a list of children’s
names that you swear you will never ever name your child because that was the
name of “that” kid from camp – you still have room for more preparation. You
are not ready if you haven’t eaten half cooked pancakes or banana boats or your
body weight in s’mores. You are not ready if you haven’t bandaged twenty-seven
skinned knees in a summer. You are not ready for adulthood until you have led a
gaggle of giggling eight year old girls on midnight kitchen raid where you
proceeded to blow mini-marshmallows out your nose like a lead ball out of a
cannon. If you don’t know the exact number of marshmallows you can stuff in
your mouth and still recite the alphabet – you, my friend – have missed out on
one of the rites of passage into the boring world of adulthood.
Summer camp is like a kumbaya version of boot camp with just
a lot more marshmallows. However, instead of turning out soldiers, summer camp turns
out empathetic, responsible young men and women that just happen to know how to
turn any piece of thread into a friendship bracelet. It gives them a wealth of
skills and experience that is hard to get anywhere else. It makes employment
coaches’ jobs easy – so many good skills. I get happy shivers just think about
the cover letters I can write for camp counsellors and cabin leaders.
I spent my childhood going to camps and I spent every summer
I was in university but one, working camp jobs in a variety of roles ranging
from camp director to lifeguard and canoe instructor. Those experiences helped
to shape me into the awesomely cool and modest person that I am today. I can’t
wait for my sons to experience the fun of being a staff member at summer camp. It
really is an amazing experience and if it is something you (or perhaps your teen)
would be interested in, then I suggest you start getting prepared. Most camp
jobs are advertised and filled long before summer vacation begins. If you wait
until June to apply, odds are it will be too late. If you want a competitive
edge, make sure you have current first aid and CPR certification. Younger teens
can look into what camps offer a CIT or councillor-in-training program. A great
place to get information on summer camps in Alberta and which camps are hiring
is the Alberta Camping Association website at www.albertacamping.com. And, as always, if
you would like help with a resume or cover letter for a summer camp job, or any
job at all. I’d be really happy to help you out with it. If you are lucky, I
will even teach you all the words to Camp Granada… Hello mother, hello father, here I am at Camp Granada, Camp is very
entertaining, and they say we will have if it stops raining.
Cheers -
Gaylene
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