The Word of Chaos

For those out there who have been curious about where I’ve been for the past week,  I was kidnapped and forced to babysit kids at WVU Tech’s Camp STEM.  The goal of Camp STEM is to allow high school students from around the state to get a taste of different engineering based occupations (and probably to promote our school too.)  I was given the “honor” of being head counselor this year.   I learned quite a bit from this experience,  and, in the true blogger’s fashion, I’m going to write five lessons I’ve learned. Now, I’m sure I’m making you think that I had an absolutely horrid time this week.  That’s not true.  Overall, the campers were well behaved, smart, and, for the most part, were interested in what they were being taught.  Our biggest problem was that most of us weren’t used to having this many campers.  Camp STEM has really flourished lately; We had 72 campers this year, which was around 30 more campers than last year.

So, here’s the list of lessons I learned at Camp STEM this year.

1. Make sure to have plenty of Pepto Bismol.

Through the course of the entire week, kids were getting stomachache’s almost daily.  We could really never determine what was causing it; Kids were ordering food from local pizza places as well as eating at our cafeteria, so I can only assume that they weren’t used to the food.

2. Don’t ever forget those medical forms. 

One night, we had a camper get hurt, and, as a precaution, we took the camper to the emergency room to get the cut checked out.  Since I was head counselor, I forgot to grab her health form on the way out.  As it turns out, hospitals won’t treat a camper unless they have a medical form.  I called and had a fellow counselor bring the medical forms to the hospital.  Our camper ended up being just fine (I don’t believe the doctor did much but tell us our camper was fine).  Lesson learned;  don’t ever forget those medical forms.

3. Stacking the counselor roster is a good idea. 

After an incident at the camp last year,  I decided to feed names of people that I knew and had worked with before to the official in charge of hiring counselors.  I was successful with this and was rewarded with a week with counselors who were hard working.    Aside from a few hires who I didn’t recommend (and tended to be more hassle than they were worth),  I was really pleased with all of the counselors this year.

4.  Counselors should get their First Aid and CPR Certifications.

After the incident with the camper, the cut, and the emergency room, I am convinced that all camp counselors everywhere should get First Aid and CPR certifications, regardless of if you’re with an educational camp or a camp out in the wild somewhere. Luckily for us, we had two counselors who were certified in First Aid with the American Red Cross.  If we hadn’t had those two guys there, we probably couldn’t have handled the problem as efficiently as we did.  I am thoroughly convinced that those are very worthwhile investments, and, less than a day after camp ended, I’ve already e-mailed our local American Red Cross chapter to inquire about upcoming classes for these certifications.

5.  Campers know when their counselors go out of their way to plan a fun activity for them and appreciate it. 

The counselors at the camp who are also acting members of LANville Gamer Community and the Digital Hope Foundation all worked together to plan a Halo 2 tournament for the kids on Wednesday night. We worked with the camp directors to secure prizes for the event and worked our tails off to make sure we had enough Xbox’s to go around.  We also set out Guitar Hero 2 for campers who aren’t hardcore FPS gamers.  During the tournament, the Coed Hall Rec Room was packed with spectators and competitors.  I would say out of 72 total campers, between 20 and 30 of them entered the Halo 2 tournament.  The most gratifying result of this was reading the campers’ comment forms at the end of the week.  Quite a few of them listed, “LAN party” as the best activity of the week.  One camper even went so far as to write “Thanx for party” on my car windshield in car chalk.

I’ve learned quite a bit more than this over the past week, but I think that I’ll wait and gather my thoughts before I try to share them with you.  I hope this helps someone who’s about to be in the same position I was.  Have fun!