9 Reasons to spend your Summer Working on a Camp

If there is any better way to recapture your youth than working as a counsellor on a summer camp I’d like to hear it. One day you’ll be floating down a river, the next you’ll be camping in the forest, a tarp and mat your only buffer between you and the elements.

Anyone who went on a camp as a kid, you might partially understand, but working on one as an adult is just as much fun, only you are old enough to appreciate it. I worked on a camp in Canada a few years ago and it was honestly one of the best experiences of my life. There are many reasons a summer spent in the wild is an incredible experience, here are just nine.

Instant Friends

You are temporarily thrust into a world with many unknown faces where you will become immediate friends. This fantasy world is your bubble and becomes your home, your village, and your community. This place, this time and these people will forever occupy a small room in your heart.

Get right into nature

You get to experience nature in its purest forms: hiking, canoeing, river crossing, forest walks, campfire singalongs, and camping. And this is just to name a few that were specific to my experience. If you work on a camp in a different country, obviously you’ll experience completely different landscapes and nature to your home country.

Create a fantasy world

You get to put so much energy into creating a loosely-theme-based fantasy world for kids, who will hang on your every fictional word, clue and story line. For an entire week I had the kids in my cabin pretending to be Power Rangers, playing Power Rangers themed Games, and they absolutely lost their shit when I showed up to a games afternoon wearing a morph suit as ‘The Purple Power Ranger’.

Live in the bush for 2 months

That’s right, your camp experience will last 2 months, not 1-2 weeks like it does for the kids. This may make it harder to say goodbye, but means the friendships you make are more likely to last longer. It also means that camp relationship could be 4 or 5 times as long.  Also, if the camp has many international leaders, think of all those couches you now have available to crash on in future travels.

And remember, the camp will supply pretty much everything you’ll need but if not you’ll always have breaks between camps to go into two for supplies so if you’re flying to Canada like I was, there’s no need to worry about those pesky baggage rules.

Learn something new about yourself

You will learn new ways to have fun, find passions you didn’t know you had, and acquire skills that you can actually apply in the real world. If you are not a natural-born leader, this is the perfect place to learn how. My example is campfire: who knew singing songs and dancing around a campfire to entertain the kiddies would be something I looked forward to every night! The songs are stupid and ridiculous, and I think this is precisely why the leaders love singing them just as much as the campers.

Campfire food

The Culinary delights. No, no. I’m not talking about the mass-produced bain-marie camp food. I mean the campfire stuff. I learnt how to make banana boats, campsite apple crisp and other wonderful treats that can all be made on a campfire with minimal effort or equipment.

7. It might help you out of your shell. Although this aspect might actually be hard,  leading on a camp requires constant excitement from the leaders so the kids are then excited to do the activities. And let me tell you, it’s not hard to fake.

Give back to the community

Camps make a positive contribution to the local community, wherever that happens to be. Many of the kids at the camp I helped run were all nominated to be there because of particular unfavourable circumstances. You don’t learn much detail and you don’t need any. You just need to make sure the kids have the best summer ever and create memories that last.

Earn cold hard cash

I’ve put this last for a reason, because no one leading on a camp is doing it for the money (because the money is terrible). But you will actually get paid. In a way, this actually seemed a bit ludicrous to me because we spend 2 months doing fun stuff in the forest, playing games, and generally just being big kids, and then still get (an albeit small) paycheck at the end of it.

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