Motivation Mondays: Ten Things I Loved About Summer Camp

Okay, so even though I have three hours of homework ahead of me today, I still feel pretty giddy with spare time because summer art camp ended on Friday. Here are some things I’m so glad I got to experience:

1. The unofficial theme song of camp was “Firework”—this may or may not have been my fault. We sang it on the bus, cut it up to make poems out of, played it for the camp-wide dance contest, but my favorite is when I overheard kids just absentmindedly singing it while they ate their lunch or worked on arts and crafts.

Firework, by Jacob, Bunk 2

(From cutting and pasting the lyrics to Katy Perry’s Firework and adding his own)

Awe, awe, awe feel like a start-art-art the

4^th of July-y-y, Oh, oh, oh the night

sky-y-y don’t just look like your own

self, waste to space-ace-ace

you have a min to-oo-oo

blast off.

2. The camp play was in three parts and my older campers wrote interstitials to expand upon the lessons of the play. They even created their own characters. My favorite was Skipper, who was part Lady Gaga, part Rainbow Bright and part, well, me:

(sung to a vaguely hip-hop beat)

In case you didn’t know,

my name is Skipper.

It’s bad to be rude,

and it’s good to be chipper,

so keep yourself in a real good mood.

It’s bad to be unpositive,

and good to be happy,

sassy and snappy.

And if you are tired,

you need to take a nappy,

‘cause I ain’t got time

for no negative Nancy. NO! (Word.)

3. Texting all the adorable things that the kids said to an adorable snuggle friend of mine. Thanks for the extra company, pal.

4. The unexpected bonds that got formed with my fellow camp counselors and specialists. (Dear Stage Right, I miss you already. Love, Stage Left.)

5. Oh yeah so, when I volunteered to be the backstage person for stage left, I kinda forgot that I maybe have mild PTSD and a fear of enclosed spaces and being voiceless. It was hard to get through all those many hours of rehearsals, sitting back there in an enclosed area unable to speak above a whisper, but I did it, without so much as a panic attack or tears. That feels like a huge accomplishment.

6. The play itself. Although I probably won’t forget the cues that got missed, I’ll also never forget how proud I was of the kids. I saved the last two pages of the script so that I could remember the happy dance we did backstage during the final curtain call.

7. The parent who told me that my favorite (shy) student had really come out of his shell this summer.

8. Making a whirlpool in the swimming pool. No one could stop themselves from smiling.

9. Writing Apples to Apples poems in poetry class. You just play Apples to Apples and then take all the words and put them into poems. It is the greatest thing ever.

10. And of course, most importantly, getting so attached to all the kids. I’m glad to be getting some grown-up time, but I’ll be a little bit lonely until I start back at the library in September.

The kids didn't sound like this, but still: