Summer camp can be one of the best experiences of your life – and not only for campers. Working at a summer camp is not only fun and fulfilling, but it will teach you things you’ll keep with you for your whole life.
Here are 9 life lessons you’ll get from working at a summer camp.
1. How to work as a team
Summer camp is all about teamwork. When you’re working at a summer camp, you’re part of different teams of different sizes, and you need to figure out how to make them all work. Whether it’s a small team for your bunk or a big team of counselors, you learn a lot about how to put yourself aside to achieve what the team needs to achieve.
That skill of setting aside your own needs and thinking as a team will come in handy no matter what you do. There isn’t a job on the planet that doesn’t require a lot of cooperation. And if you already have the compassion, understanding, and ‘team first’ mentality that makes a great team member, then you’ll find, more often than not, things seem to go your way.
2. How to work hard
It might only be 8 – 12 weeks, but being a counselor is an ‘always on’ job. Sure you’ll get a night off now and again, but if a crying camper wakes you up at 3:00 am because they had a nightmare, you can’t very well roll over and say ‘sorry, my shift starts at 9’.
So you learn how to work hard. You learn how to maximize your productivity and you learn how to continue to be productive for hours at a time, and you learn how to give 100% when you’re enthusiasm is really at about 2%.
3. How to think creatively
When you’re responsible for 10 kids and whatever you had planned gets canceled, you have to think creatively. You learn how to adapt when things don’t go to plan (and they never do) and it’s up to YOU to think of a way out of the situation.
Whether it’s dealing with something minor, like rain cancelling an activity and you have to think of new things to do for two hours, to a major problem, like someone forgetting their rain coat and not telling you until it starts raining (garbage bag, anyone?) you learn to dream up new and out of the box solutions – because that’s what works when you’re working at camp.
4. How to solve problems
Naturally, thinking creatively is only the first step towards getting a solution to a problem. When you’re working at a summer camp, you learn how to put your new, creative idea into action – quickly and effectively. Camp counselors are do-ers – it’s the nature of the job.
What this means is that down the line, when ex-counselors are working their serious corporate jobs, they know how to prioritize and execute ideas, and can be relied on to solve problems quickly and effectively.
5. How to inspire people
There are always going to be days at camp when a counselor, a camper, or a group of campers just does not want to put the work in. They’re tired, ground down, overheated and stressed. They don’t want to do it.
Sometimes, it’s up to you to pick everyone up and get them back on course – an invaluable skill for later in life.
6. How to ask for help
Of course, being a part of a team isn’t all about inspiring others and coming up with solutions. It’s also about recognizing when you need help and learning how to ask for it.
Camp is an incredible testing ground for learning the difference between those times when you just need to focus and figure it out yourself, and when you really need an extra pair of hands. And being able to tell the difference is usually the separates a good employee from a great one.
And guess what? Employers know it.
7. How to communicate
Communication is absolutely essential to almost anything you want to do after summer camp. Whether you’re volunteering, working in an office, running your own startup, or just spending time with friends, being able to communicate ideas clearly helps you make sense of the world and helps you connect and engage with those around you.
And summer camp is uniquely positioned to help you do that. First off, you’re talking to people from all over, so you learn to alter what you say to keep that communication open. Second, you’re probably living in some sort of group setting. Nothing facilitates communication like close quarters living with complete strangers (at the start of summer). And finally, you’ll inevitably end up talking to a big group about a complex set of instructions at some point over the summer – a great opportunity for you to find your own unique public speaking voice.
8. How to find comfort outside your comfort zone
For the campers, summer camp is all about getting them comfortable being outside their comfort zone. Comfortable trying new things, comfortable taking positions of leadership, comfortable doing something when they’re not 100% sure an idea is going to work.
But what you might not realize is that the same experience happens when the counselors. With such a varied job description and such long hours of creative thinking, communicating, and problem-solving, there’s bound to be a moment that you’re pushed outside of what you know into what you don’t.
Learning to do that well is a skill that will stay with you forever.
But perhaps the most important thing…
9. Working at a summer camp teaches you to lead
There are not that many jobs where 19, 20, and 21-year-olds are leaders. Internships, summer placement programs, graduate streams – all of these start people at the bottom of the totem pole.
But when you’re working at a summer camp, it’s not just the kids who learn to lead – you’re thrust into a leadership position right away. Whether you’re leading the kids in your bunk, other counselors as the head of a small department, or the whole camp in a camp-wide activity – it’s all good experience for when you have to lead in the outside world.
Because the skills stay the same – only now you have some first-hand experience.
There you have it. 9 ways that working at a summer camp will help you build skills that will stay with you forever. Sound like something you like? We’re hiring for camps right now, so submit your application today!