In my experience this summer, camp has started out fairly smoothly on Monday mornings. Yes, there is the hectic running around, setting up, and signing in factor, but I always look forward to welcoming that new batch of local kids who have no idea how much fun they are about to have. I enjoy taking the hands of little ones as they tearfully and bravely wave bye to Mom. There is the confusion that washes over me as we sit in our circle and play that first round of the Name Game and I seriously wonder how I will ever keep the names straight (or even learn how to pronounce some of them for that matter!). I love how as the day passes we start to figure out who these kids really are, where they come from, what they need, and how to make them smile. And as the week goes on, I love being able to look around at all those kids briefly and know exactly which kid is still in the bathroom.
Yesterday morning was a tough one and I don't really know why. I spent the weekend camping out of town, and as relaxing as it was, I still think I could have used an additional day off. Even though I don't feel like I have the flu, I spent Sunday evening pretty sick and was up most of the night. That didn't contribute well to my morning, I guess. When I got to AEP my coworker was kind of tired and cranky, and my strong front started to crumble as I realized that if he was allowed to be tired then so was I. Things kinda fell apart from that point on. We didn't have class lists or sign-in sheets printed, we couldn't find our supplies even though I clearly asked for them to be labelled, another staff member gave us some serious attitude, we were running pretty late and we were still trying to gather things on the other side of town, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It wasn't pretty. So I made a phone call to one of the supervisors in the city, and let's just say that although my intentions were to avoid confrontation, I basically vented my little heart out to her and almost cried and said things I might not have said had I gotten a little more sleep the night before. At first I felt much better, but then she said something about having people sit down to work through things, and I realized I maybe shouldn't have placed that call. Because I hate those meetings. I have been in them many-a-time before. I know that it is good to communicate and have mediation and resolve, but I don't want to. Simple as that. I don't want to sit in a meeting and have to tell people how they are letting me down. Would you?
In the past few years, and especially this past year and half working for the City, I have learned to hold the value of teamwork very highly. It's impossible to accomplish anything without it. I don't know where or when we went wrong yesterday, but at some point we stopped leaning on each other and were all running around trying to do things our way, on our own, and it just wasn't working. As soon as we pulled together and realized that we needed each other things slowly took a turn for the better. My first impression of this week filled me with dread and made me wish the week away, but now I am so thankful for the group of amazing little kids we have and for the dynamics of this particular camp and for the sunshine and for the lake and for my partner in crime. As a side note, the kids caught 16 fish at the lake today using homemade fishing poles, and my coworker also caught a huge turtle with his bare hands! It was brilliant. I smiled for 6 hours straight.
When I was talking to my supervisor yesterday about all the drama, she said to me, "Rachel, we can never change anybody or the way they affect us, but we can change the way we respond to the things that they do and we can learn how to respect and value them". I thought that was very sound advice. I am putting it into effect immediately.
So, even though summer is half over, I am gonna go with the whole "the glass is half full" thing. It suits, doesn't it? 4.5 more weeks of amazing sun and fun and laughter and days spent at the pool and waterpark and 7-11.
I'm walkin' on SUNSHINE!
~C~
