Hot Mess

As I wrap up my first week working at the leadership conference for the second year in a row, I have one thing to say. It was a hot mess. Way too many last minute plans, organization, and lack of communication made things turn sour, but for the most part, I kept positive and fought through it. What makes it even worse that there's people working over us that has never worked for the program in the past so they had no idea what to expect and the help of the fellow coworkers who have worked. And from the way they facilitate, you question if they were trained properly for their positions. Despite the troubles from not having enough rooms from the students, early arrival of the parents from inaccurate information on the website, and the linens not coming in time for the students, we were able to pull through successfully.

Throughout the remainder of the week, we had way too many switch not only classrooms, but dorm rooms because of angry parents calling wanting specific children to be together, small incidents of things getting stolen? or missing?, homesickness, fighting, and scholars making their suitemates feel uncomfortable. I was in this program last year, but the difference was that I worked with elementary school kids and they were not as bad as the middle school ones. I feel like the middle school kids are entering puberty and everything is changing for them and this is the time where they figure out themselves and their body going through so many changes.

We also encountered some crazy things happening such as a parent coming in to give her daughter some Advil because she had an headache? Really?, a boy peeing on his suitemates stuff for who knows what? Another child who brought in over $1,000 worth of items and lost his bag which contained these items for his mother to come in and get mad at us. Really? But to later find the bag in the spot the teacher mentioned for him to check. Really? Many students overslept meaning that they missed breakfast. It is not our responsibility to wake them up, but if we have to, we do. I had to physically go into the suites to knock on a child's door to wake him up. What a pain. In order to do that, I have to call the RA to use the master key and blah blah blah. It was too much. What really blew me away were many students who switched from overnight to day scholars just because there was no Wifi or a TV in the dorms. Some students even had their angry parents call demanding a room change to be with their brother/sister or their close friend.We are not here at camp to glue ourselves to our electronic devices and surround ourselves with the same people. We are here to make new friends, learn how to interact with other people, and to have fun. If the parent is so concerned about their child's safety, them just maybe they should not enroll them into an overnight camp.