MST@MSU | Days 12, 13, and 14

You can tell how hectic the end of camp is for the counselors based on how long it takes the final repot to be posted, or how many of the last days that final report needs to include. In this case, two full academic days and the closing ceremonies and rolled up into one a handful of days after the end of camp. Sounds fine, right? Unfortunately, since it is basically a week later, I barely remember what happened each day, and the little cards that have the daily schedule on them can only help so much (especially since I decided not to date them). So, I’m just going to focus on the main events that took place: Talent Show and Closing Ceremonies.

Talent Show
The 20th Annual Talent Show took place on Friday night. Our RA skit was thrown together earlier that afternoon, since we were so busy with a ton of other events and occurrences at camp that had distracted us. Since the programs had already been printed up, and since we had put down that “Bye Bye Bye” would be part of our performance, we had to throw that in their at some part…

All of the campers acts were really good, with a few nice stand-outs (Chinese Yo-Yo, Oboe, etc.) and a very funny skit making fun of the RAs, with my antics being one of the focal points. The funny part is that everyone poked fun at me sleeping all of the time, which is close to true, but the other RAs slept just as much as (if not more than) me, but who cares? It was funny just watching them laugh at me carrying around a pillow and falling asleep on the ground.

Then came our skit, with the seven of us saying some funny lines, dancing a little to “Bye Bye Bye,” throwing in a few camp inside jokes to get the kids laughing, and showing off exactly what happens when the campers go to bed each night. I think it went pretty well, but then again I was part of it and working on no sleep and a Red Bull, so I could be way off…

Closing Ceremonies
The night before, we worked with all of the student speakers about what they would say about their classes and clinics, so we had another later night (ignoring our pranking antics, of course!), but we did get some pizza out of it. The morning of the ceremonies, I helped make sure that no one left anything in their rooms, that everything was clean, and directed them back over to Broad for the last act of camp.

I barely knew what was going on, from staying up late to being tired from two weeks of camp, so the speeches just flew by before Mazur and I had to get up for the RA speech. We had made a quick list about who we needed to thank, then decided just to switch off between each one for the speech, making things up as we went. We threw a “whoopsies!” and “french roast!” in there as well, and I think we did fine. We actually forgot to thank the instructors, but then again we barely had an idea of what we were saying half the time.

After a few more speeches, camp was over. I called color groups one last time, handed out the packets to all of my greens, posed for a few pictures, and said good-bye to a bunch of the students. It was both more and less sad than last year, as everything was this entire camp, so I won’t even bother trying to compare them.

Once that was over and the last kid had left, we held our staff closing ceremonies in the office, passing out our own awards and grabbing lunch together before splitting to finish moving out of the dorms. Mazur and I moved out at the same time, with him crashing at my place that afternoon before a staff dinner and that night before moving back home. It was good having a mini-celebration after everything was said and done, especially since a larger one will be held in a few weeks time to officially close things out.

But camp is still over, and now with August right around the corner, I’m back to my normal life of strange sleep schedules, buying groceries, and not looking after sixty middle-schoolers twenty-four hours a day.

MST@MSU | Day 11

It’s strange to think that camp is almost over, but it is. So much has happened this year that the days seemed to fly by, especially with all the changes from last year. It’s been a great camp, and I know I’ll miss it once we hit closing ceremonies on Saturday.

Today, however, was relatively normal. I woke up to run, although I simply did some crunches and push-ups while the five kids ran. It felt good, since I hadn’t really done anything like that in a while, but I knew that running would’ve been a bad choice. I’ll probably run tomorrow, since I haven’t in a few days, but we’ll see when I wake up tomorrow morning. At breakfast, they had French Roast again, so I was very excited about drinking that all day. My calls of “French Roast!” have become part of camp, so much so that some kids actually ask me to say “french roast” even when no coffee is involved.

I went to Nuclear Astrophysics this morning, and brought my pillow since I planned on sleeping. I grabbed a newspaper on the way in, then spent a good part of the class period trying to solve the Sudoku puzzle in it. I wasn’t even that tired, even, but I guess it was good that I didn’t sleep since the class went out to the parking structure for the second half of the class. I ran into two of my friends while walking with them, which was pretty cool, but otherwise I just watched as they used their cosmic ray detectors for the entire period.

I had the afternoon off again, but I still went to lunch and had some more french roast before taking a two-hour nap. Following the nap, I took Creative Writing and simply listened to some Futureheads songs on YouTube for the entire clinic. Afterward, I rounded up my color group for an early dinner before helping to take thirty-eight of the kids to the MSU Dairy Store for some ice cream. I used by two-scoop voucher to get some Honors Coffee Toffee, which tasted delicious!

Once we got all of the kids back to Shaw, we broke for computer lab and talent show. I went with Priya and Mazur to the computer lab to start, but I just played two games of Abalone with Mazur (and won both) before shuttling some kids back to Shaw and bringing others over. I also got to jump in a quick game of Ultimate behind the dorm, but it fell apart as more kids showed up and the game switched to soccer. Troy and I still tossed around until we had to get the kids inside, though, so that was good.

Following room checks, we held our meeting and set up who the closing ceremony speakers would be, as well as set the classes for tomorrow. We also talked about the memory book that Mel was putting together, and it looks like it will be really cool. Once we had everything in order, we went downstairs to watch Jurassic Park, starting from where we left off the night before, then went to bed.

Another day down, and only two-and-a-half left…

MST@MSU | Days 9 and 10

Well, due to another late night, I wasn’t able to post up what happened on Monday. From what I remember, the only high points were College Night with Melissa Mattingly representing the Honors College, messing with three rooms that had left their door unlocked, watching Paranormal Activity followed by a sleep-over in the office, and winning the wind turbine contest in Mechanical Engineering. Pretty solid day, with a good variety of classes and relaxation time.

Getting back to today, I woke up for running but then decided that I wouldn’t run and just sleep on the concrete steps while the kids ran. Yes, I actually did fall asleep. I gradually let the kids back into Shaw through the back door while I waited for the rest of the kids to finish, followed by me showering and shaving in a bathroom on a separate part of the floor that the boys aren’t allowed on. It felt nice, but that wasn’t the best part about the morning.

The best was French Roast! I grabbed two mugs before the coffee ran out, and I completely enjoyed it. To be quite honest, I don’t really remember what else I had for breakfast since all I cared about was the coffee. Once I was suitably caffeinated, I collected the kids for Mathematics and walked them over to Wells Hall. I dropped them off at the room, then trounced up to the second floor to fall asleep on the couches, my pillow in hand. I set my alarm for 1030 to make sure I was back down for the end of class, then quickly drew the crop circle picture they were working on while I waited for class to be over.

Since I had the afternoon off, I technically could have just gone straight to bed, but instead I decided to grab some lunch since I knew that I’d be really hungry later if I didn’t. It was a good choice, since there were bacon cheeseburgers and more French Roast! Couldn’t ask for a better meal plan at that point. I ate relatively quickly, then went to my room to get ready for a nap. I reset my alarm, called Amazon to figure out a strange charge, then slept for a few hours before clinics.

I walked Creative Writing down to their classroom, logged onto the computer, and basically just messed around online until the class was over. It was nice again to just relax, since I had done the same thing in my clinic yesterday. Walking back went fine, and the rest of free time before dinner was pretty fun. I played some soccer with a few of the boys, but I sweated a lot due to the heat and the fact that I don’t really play soccer at all.

Dinner was fine, but for some reason I didn’t eat that much. It’s possibly because I did drink four glasses of Poweraid (two of them delivered by a kid for RA Appreciation), but there’s so many reasons for it that I can’t really pin it down. Once dinner was over, I changed into my bathing suit to get ready for going to IM West to go swimming. It was pretty fun, thought I didn’t swim much since I just wanted to relax that afternoon.

We walked back to Shaw, then got ready for study hall. I stayed in Shaw and played some Connect 4 with a camper before helping a group with their Mars mission project. It was a little troublesome since they had such a small budget, but we eventually made it work out. Once that was done, we shuffled the kids to their rooms, had our RA meeting, tried (but failed) to watch Jurassic Park, then went our separate ways for the night.