Camp has ended.

I mentioned in my last entry that I was working as a counselor at a day camp this summer, and yesterday was the last day of camp. I know it's been three months since my last entry but I wanted to wait until camp ended so I could just talk about it all at once.

The way this camp worked was that there were group counselors and activity counselors. Group counselors were assigned to groups of campers and took them to all of their scheduled activities, and were encouraged to participate alongside them. Activity counselors ran said activities. I was a group counselor.

Every day, campers would get to choose an "elective" in the morning for their afternoon period. And every Monday, campers would choose a "club", which was a week-long choice that was at the last period of the day. Group counselors are all assigned to an activity that they help supervise for elective and club. For weeks 1-2 and 5-8 I was with performing arts and for weeks 3-4 I was with music.

I'll try to give a week by week recap of everything.
Week 1: I had Group 8, which means I had the kids going into 8th grade, which are the oldest campers that the camp has. I wasn't thrilled at first but grew to like most of my group. There was one kid that was constantly causing problems for me, but he was mercifully only there for week 1.
Week 2: Said kid's best friend, who wasn't AS bad, but still bad, only stayed on Monday and wasn't in for the rest of the week, so everything ran fairly smoothly.
Week 3: hoo boy. Got some new campers, most of whom were all right, but this ONE KID. Dear God. He never listened to me or any other counselors and was constantly causing problems for not only me, but the others in the group too.
Week 4: This kid continued to cause problems, but his friend was actually all right. On Friday the kid finally broke down because he was upset that everyone was calling him short and that's why he was acting out. He claimed that I hated him so I then calmly explained that I didn't, but keeping him under control was frustrating for me. He ran off to take a walk and everyone was concerned. His friend went after him and I requested to be moved to a different group because I felt I couldn't take group 8 anymore.
Week 5: I quickly came to regret that decision, as I was moved down to group 5, the kids going into 5th grade. They were much more hyper and harder to keep under control, and there was definitely more than one troublemaker among them.
Week 6: I was requesting to go back to group 8 since I realized their more laid-back personalities were better suited to me. I had one kid who had a severe anxiety problem and another whose boat tipped over on Thursday and he got stuck underneath, so he was a bit of a mess. Him freaking out caused anxiety kid to freak out, and it was not fun.
Week 7: Thankfully, I got moved back to group 8 that week. Things got a lot better, and the troublemakers weren't really trying to be, they were just kind of dumb.
Week 8: Pretty much the same as 7.

Weeks 7 and 8 were also Color Wars, and every counselor and camper is assigned to either the blue, orange, or green team. I was on the green team and we won! It was also the first year since the camp opened that blue didn't win.
Alongside that, I made friends, learned how to play guitar, met a cute British guy, and the good outweighed the bad!
We're having a staff dinner at a restaurant near the camp tonight. I'll miss everyone...