Cheers erupt from counselors standing in the field waving a flag and dancing like crazy.  They yell and scream and try to get the sixth graders attention, trying to sort out who belongs in what cabin.  After a moment of thinking back to their sixth grade selves and find some energy and excitement, the counselors get down to business, taking care of a cabin full of sixth graders for four days.

Being a counselor at sixth grade camp is a lot of fun but it takes a lot of time out of school.  Leaving on Sunday morning, counselors spent two days vigorously team building and training in counselor groups.  “I loved getting to know all the other counselors and I made a lot of new friends,” Stefanie Getz, a sophomore who was a counselor this year said.

There were also many hours spent getting the cabins ready for the campers as well as thinking of every possible situation that sixth graders could get into and how they could handle them.  But nothing could prepare them quite as well as the sixth graders themselves.

The days were filled with activity after activity.  The jobs of the counselors were endless; taking the kids to the bathroom, waking up with them in the middle of the night if they were scared, combating homesickness with loving and caring words, all with only a couple of hours of sleep in a camp bed.

Then there were the cheers, something about camp that no one ever forgets.  Counselors had to help the campers come up with something creative that they could use as they cheered their cabin closer and closer to the spirit stick.  Their inner child sprung up once again, but only for a mere second as they had to go back to their responsibilities with the kids.

“Getting back into school has been really hard and there’s a lot of work to make it, but it’s definitely worth the experience!” Getz says, looking back at her experiences at camp.  Many counselors end up going year after year because although it’s a lot of hard work, it’s worth it to take a week off of school and let the sixth grader in yourself ignite.