Listen to Sydney (2022) talk about her work as a summer camp counselor this past summer.

Stephanie: You're listening to Gear Up, the Duke Career Center's student produced podcast showcasing real students summer internship experiences. My name's Stephanie. And today, we're talking to Sydney, who worked as a camp counselor this past summer.

Sydney: My name is Sydney. I'm a sophomore. I'm studying psychology and planning to minor in education. And I want to eventually be at elementary school teacher and work in the education field.

Stephanie: Very cool. So what did you do this past summer?

Sydney: This summer, I was a camp counselor for Head First summer camps and I worked primarily with kids three and four in a traditional day camp setting. So we did arts and crafts activities and science and sports and music and swimming. And each week had a different educational theme and that was supposed to teach them a certain socio-emotional skill like resilience or optimism. And so my job was to keep them safe and go through the activities and make sure they had fun at the end of the week.

Stephanie: Cool, that's important. So how did you find out kind of about the camp, about the position? Where was it located? How do you know about it?

Sydney: It's right by my house. But I saw the job posting on Indeed.com and was just looking for.

Stephanie: I love that website.

Sydney: Yeah, amazing. I was looking for different summer camp opportunities. And then I had seen I think I must have been in high school, tutored some kids that maybe went to that camp or something because the the logo was very familiar looking to me. So I've been looked into the website a little bit more saw that it's a national camp that has a lot of different local branches of it. And then I think the one near my house opened four or five years ago. So it's relatively new in the grand scheme of things. And then just applied from there.

Stephanie: Yeah. And so had you had any experience doing that kind of thing before working with kids or going to camp or whatever?

Sydney: All through high school I worked with kids, there kind of like my favorite group to be around, my favorite type of job. And so I was a camp counselor in high school through my temple. Also with three and four year olds and I was a swim coach over the summer and have tutored elementary school kids. I had a lot of different experiences with kids, but this was my first time being head counselor. Primarily in charge as opposed to just kind of supporting and getting to play with them.

Stephanie: Be responsible for them that way.

Sydney: Disciplining them.

Stephanie: So what was like a normal day? I mean, I know you said it changed a lot. What time would you usually get there and how did the day kind of play out from there?

Sydney: We would get there at around seven forty-five and thenwe have a staff meeting of all the counselors at the camp at around eight to go through kind of the day, the schedule. Any notes that parents have left--good, or criticism that we needed to work on. And then we would start. We'd have, we'd have drop off which is a big ordeal. We had to get trained on it because they wanted everyone in and out as fast as possible. So we had to like get all the kids, bring them to the rooms, make sure they're entertained. And that took about twenty-five, thirty minutes. And then you we'd have an all campmeeting with the kids too where they would run the story line of the week. So if it was a penguin themed, they'd talk about penguins a little bit and introduce the story and then I would my group would go to swimming. Then you would have music then lunchtime, sports, arts and crafts, snack time, nap time, goodbye time.

Stephanie: That's a packed day. So what time did you end most days?

Sydney: Camp ended around two thirty, I want to say. After pickup was done, it was three. And then we'd have clean up and have our end of the day meeting where we talked about things that