Summer Job

I've been pretty incredibly busy the past few days, but a lot of people (including my family) Normally I try to do a little more than just journal about what I've been doing, but I haven't been easy to reach and this is my way to giving everyone a little more detail that "I'm at camp, it's been busy."

It is called "I Wonder What Will's Up To," after all.

(This isn't going through even the limited levels of editing another post might, so bear with me.)

I am working as a counselor with a leadership camp run by The Academy at Harvard Square. I wasn't 100 percent sure what my role would be coming into it, and it's still hard to describe, but basically I'm with the campers serving as the functional arm of The Academy. Mostly it means a lot of menial tasks that just need to get done; setting up Wi-Fi, making sure the water is stocked, buying shampoo, sometimes helping kids if they're sick or homesick. I also am in charge of keeping track of the kids in the morning and at night, making sure they are awake and ready to go to breakfast, getting them on the bus, then waiting for them in the afternoon to take them to dinner, shuttle them around to bathrooms, dorms, etc. Imagine herding 32 sheep, who all want to buy something at Starbucks. 

The jobs is pretty stressful, because even though I'm not doing much administration work I have to keep track of 32 Brazilian kids, most of whom are 10-13 years old, and don't listen to me very well. I don't know if it's a cultural thing, but I like to think that it's disrespectful to ignore people everywhere. They're good kids--they're wicked young and in another country, living without parents for the first time, so they get some leeway-- just hard to organize.

One of the adult counselors with them is really understanding and appreciative, one has not truly listened to a word I've said since she arrived, and one speaks no English so I don't really know her. Technically my hours are 7-12, 5-11, but because of logistic issues I worked about 16 hours yesterday. I've described it to a few others (and vehemently to myself, under my breath, with adjectives) as being anywhere from "nuts" to a "nightmare."

It's been hard to In the chain of command, all the people above me are Korean and all the people below me are Brazilian, so everyone has their own secret language, and it gets old. I completely understand that it's hard to learn another language-- my French is awful--

In the mornings we go to the Harvard campus to have class. If you ever think to yourself with pride, "yeah, I know stuff," walk through a science building of a prestigious school. Nothing in there makes any sense, and there's an incredible amount of it. I probably couldn't pass a high school chemistry test at this point so it's weird that I'm even allowed to be inside a building that has words and phrases like "centrifuge" and "DNA synchronization drop off point."

Because of reasons (related to parent-chaperone-organizer relations) I won't disclose, I am giving short English lessons before the student lecturers arrive. The lecturers are very qualified to teach English; it's their job. I am not, and it is not mine, but we're making it work. Yesterday I taught them the word "wicked," which so far has been very useful. I feel like not giving this lesson, though, was a serious missed opportunity.

By contrast, the campers, chaperones and I are staying at Pine Manor College. I'm beginning to understand why no one has heard of it.  Never host an event at Pine Manor College. The grounds are nice, but the dorms themselves are not, and the lady in charge of summer housing is doing a pretty horrible job. I've had to call her two or three times before anything we ask gets done--there were kids from another college staying in one of our rooms about 10 hours before the kids arrived, and one of our bathrooms was filled with someone else's toiletries.

In conclusion, I'm going to take a nap now.


-Will


"You're never too old to go to space camp, dude."