Looking Back, Looking Ahead

In a few hours, the first campers of the summer will arrive. I am excited and ready and checking off all of the last minute lists, making sure we are prepared. I feel calm and confident and optimistic. May was a roller coaster of excitement followed by stress followed by excitement and so on, but I've reflected on the past year and come to peace with the summer ahead.

A year ago today, I was being verbally abused by my boss in vicious, confusing manner that I have never before experienced and never again will tolerate. My passion for camp and desire to one day run an overnight camp stopped me every time I prepared to pack my stuff and never look back. Two days into the first week of camp, the Board of Directors called me and let me know that when the BOSS came home for the weekend, they were going to meet with him and he wouldn't be coming back, and, by the way, did I think I could run camp by myself this summer? With a level of confidence that could only come from being completely unaware, I said, "of course". Months before, I'd been a Senior Coordinator with several bosses above me running a day camp. Was I qualified... most definitely... Ignorance, it turns out, really is bliss.

Recently I was looking through photos from last summer and found one of myself I'd not seen before. I have deep, dark circles under my eyes and I look numb, exhausted and shocked. I didn't know I had looked like that, but looking back, that sums it up pretty accurately. Half of my staff hated me because they thought I got the BOSS fired on purpose so I could take over. Many of the staff were helpful but aware that I was in over my head, and all of us seemed to be wandering around, unsure of what to do next and no amount of fake confidence from me could inspire and lead such a group. Camp had piles of broken furniture and garbage everywhere and buildings were in disrepair. I looked around often and thought, "who the hell thought it was a good idea to put a 26 year old in charge of this garbage dump of a camp?!?"

Months before, I had been out at a school recruiting campers, I remember a parent walking by and asking which camp I was from and when I said the name, she literally shuddered and "oh." She quickly apologized and explained that she didn't mean any disrespect towards me but her child had been there the year before and had a bad experience. I had heard that message over and over again, and once I was actually at camp last summer, I finally understood. I shuddered a lot last summer too.

Somehow, we made it through and had a safe, fun summer with our campers.

I spent September-May bound and determined to turn this camp around. After a meeting with the Executive Committee of the Board, during which they told me that the property itself was worth several million dollars and, in theory, we could go into debt up to that before we shut down, and that after 61 years of camp, they were committed to remaining open, and so I should just go forward and try to fix it- I realized that the bar was set pretty low and as long as I didn't open several credit cards and run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, or get sent to rehab for a gambling problem, I would be doing better than the last few directors. Once again I wondered who thought an inexperienced 26 year old was the best choice for this task, but I charged ahead, sending out a monthly newsletter, contacting alumni, asking people for support, calling my old bosses asking for direction so I could make up policies and procedures. I did my best to ignore the negativity that came before me. My dad spent the same 9 months building, repairing, hauling garbage, and trying to get the property in order.

Years of bad reputation, messed up budget, garbage dump of a camp be damned, we will succeed.

And then the economy fell apart and we added that to my battle and as we looked at registration this May, I was crushed to see that we weren't even where we had been last year (I'd expected to grow by at least 100 or more campers) and I spent several days deflated, unsure of how to go on. How do you keep fighting when you don't ever seem to get ahead? What was the point?

But eventually, I looked around camp and noticed that, 9 months and 5 extra large dumpsters later, there weren't any piles of garbage anywhere. A beautiful, custom made sign marked the entrance to camp, as well as flowers in the planter and neatly trimmed grass. Buildings were clean and organized, cabin steps and trim were freshly painted, broken windows fixed and camp looked nice. One of the new staff had gone around and taken photos of literally every inch of camp and posted them to her facebook page. Several of her friends that work for another camp had commented on how pretty our camp is and how much they wished their camp looked like that and I realized that we aren't the dump we were just one year ago.

I begin this summer with only 3 returning staff who, somehow made it through last year with a lot of confidence in me and an almost entirely new staff who keep making comments to me about how excited they are to be working here and how much my passion inspires them (their words, not mine). My summer of learning by making mistake after mistake led me to make hundreds of changes to the schedule and prepare for many things that I was surprised by last year, so I go into the summer feeling much more knowledgeable and ready.

Our registration isn't where I expected it to be and I am disappointed, but I know that I worked hard and did everything that I could and that this camp has years worth of issues to overcome that I can't fix in 9 months. And so, I have two options: I can let stress and anxiety and all of the remaining problems crush me OR I can choose to ignore them, knowing that I have long term and short term goals, a vision for the future and a desire to work hard and problem solve, and in the meantime, I will not dwell. In the meantime, I will celebrate every small success. I will remain positive and I will give every bit of love and passion and care that I have in me to this camp. I will lead my staff with kindness and enthusiasm and encouragement. And whether there are 30 kids or 300 kids in front of us, we will provide a quality program that leaves kids feeling connected to camp, cared for and having had the best experience. My staff and I are going to spend this summer pouring out love and positive energy and beautiful spirit that will wrap this camp and all of our campers in a golden light that can only be described as camp magic. And in doing so, our lives will be changed, our camper's lives will be changed, and gradually, this camp will succeed.

In order for this to happen, I need to be a leader that remains focused, optimistic, and faces difficulties head on. There will be challenges this summer and the journey ahead of this camp is long. I can drag my feet with heavy steps, or I can leap, bounce, dance, and skip forward enjoying the adventure of it. Either way, we're moving forward, so I might well make the most of it.

So here we go... let the summer begin!!!!!!!!!!!!