Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.
One of the things I occasionally regret never doing was going to some cool summer camp as a kid. Basically I didn't give a gently caress at the time because I was a nerd and also a pussy about not wanting to be away from home. My only experience about those camps comes from TV shows and movies. You know the ones, with the cool camp activities by the lake, rad counselors, comfy cabins, staying up late watching scary movies, and coming back every year to see all your summer friends again. Or in Law and Order SVU where they are all rape centers. So what as summer camp like for you? Was it a fun filled adventure that gave you memories to last a lifetime or was it overpriced garbage that drove your family into the poor house?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Rubies
Dec 30, 2005

Live Forever
Die Every Day

:h: :s: :d: :c:
How much do you really remember from those years, and how much of it is just flashes of random poo poo? I went to one for a few summers and I have some ok memories, but overall it's like everything else from like 15 and before - just little memories here and there. For example, if I think of it as a standalone thing it was this woodsy adventure. But now that I'm an adult and can drive a vehicle past the actual campsite I realize that I wasn't really that far from the city and I was just away on a "get em out the neighborhood for a few weeks" state funded youth program thing. Shot some bows, had a few laughs, my brother got stung by a bee one time, it was basically normal childhood time frittering but with teenage counselors (who were seen as adults by us lol).

I think you're watching too many movies where they frame adult-style relationships in a romantic, remote setting and use kids @ camp as a vehicle. IRL it's just a bunch of dicking around so your parents can go to work and pay less than it would cost for daycare. This might not apply to the Wet Hot American Summer kind where you go away for most of the summer but for the 2 week and less / day program ones it wasn't as life changing as TV makes it out to be. As a bonus, I was not touched in the night SVU style so that was cool.

Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

Was it a fun filled adventure that gave you memories to last a lifetime or was it overpriced garbage that drove your family into the poor house?

Being a military cadet was awesome, since the government is actually paying you to go to camp. Cadets in general is a pretty sweet deal if you're in a low-income household, because from what I remember we didn't have to pay a dime for anything other than stuff like boot polish or spray starch.

I was a sea cadet, and we could apply to go to one of a number of summer training centres across Canada, some of which specialized in things like sailing, flying or marksmanship. I went to HMCS Quadra on Vancouver Island for two years, which wasn't specialized for one specific thing, and was a more general centre for sea cadets. Your first year was usually a two-week general training course (TWGT, or Twijits) and for the next year you had to choose a trade that aligned with your interests, Boatswain, Gunnery, Band or Sail. Boatswain (or Bos'n) was the general seamanship trade, where you learn all about working on a boat. Gunnery was made out to be where the hardasses were, where you learned all about parade drill, how to survive in the woods, being a drill instructor and so on. Band and Sail are pretty self explanatory, with Sail focused on smaller boats rather than working on a ship.

Second year was three weeks, third year was six weeks, where you could choose even more specialized trades like Medic, Cookery, Physical Trainer, Marine Engineering (Living on one of these for a few weeks and learning how to manage and operate it) and Shipwright (No idea what they did, other than a cute girl I had a crush on was a shipwright the next year I saw her). After that, you could be brought on as staff where you'd get a pay bump and be instructing cadets, being a divisional petty officer, running the boathouse, or whatever. It seemed like a lot of the place was run by cadets, like the regulation office where I had to write a statement after seeing a fight had one of the senior guys from my corps as its chief, the mess hall where the cookery cadets were doing their thing, or the canteen and arcade in the breezeway that was run by cadets. It's a bit over 1000 cadets in total that are there, I think.

I'm from the prairies, and flying to Quadra was my first time in an airplane. I think we flew in a C-130 Hercules, or at least some sort of military plane where we were buckled in to these cargo netting seats. It was friggin' awesome, and I was disappointed when we flew in a regular chartered flight on the way home.

For living arrangements, people on the two or three week program lived in Tent City, which was a series of military tents with cots and lockers set up inside. Six-week cadets lived in buildings, with the males in the H barracks and the girls in the swastika. Divisional petty officers got their own rooms in the barracks where their division lived, and staff cadets had their own barracks. There was a laundromat as well, but I can't remember if we all went there as a division at set times, or if it was come and go as you please.

The everyday routine had us wake up and get ready for morning colours around 6 or 7, which is where every division would fall in and march to the parade square to raise the flag, hear the agenda for the day, have the band play and so on. The language would alternate between English and French every other day or week, I can't remember exactly - I just know you got fluent with drill commands in both languages pretty drat quick. After colours (Or was it before?) your division would march to the mess hall for breakfast, and afterwards you would do the scheduled training until lunch, then more scheduled training until dinner, then sunset, which is where the flag comes down for the day. Then there would be kye, which was an informal gathering at the mess hall around dusk where you could walk over from your barracks and mingle amongst all the other cadets in a relaxed setting, get a snack and chill out before lights out. Kye was voluntary, you could stay at your bunk and polish your boots or obsess over your uniform or w/e, or sneak around and cause mischief with your friends in other divisions/trades. I remember during my first kye I was accidentally bumped down the stairs and twisted an ankle, and I was carried to the sick bay and taken care of by senior cadets in the medic trade.

I skipped the TWGT course and went straight into Bos'n for my three-week course, and the six-week course the year after. Some of the training we did was learning how to pilot boats like these motor work boats, boston whalers, zodiacs and so on. We also learned how to crew larger sailboats, from cutters to tall ships. Living on the Maple Leaf for a few days and having to be an effective crew with your division was so fuckin' awesome, especially when everyone got their rhythm right and you were hauling rear end with the wind tilting the ship almost into the water. I still remember the poo poo-eating grin on my face when it was my turn to be the helmsman and I got to steer the boat in rough water while it was raining. I think I made someone barf. The captain's name was Captain Falconer, which I thought was hilarious because Smash Bros. just came out and I was a huge dork.

Other stuff we did was small arms training at the rifle range, survival skills (we'd sail a cutter to a deserted island to make our own shelter and keep watch, gunners did a hike to a remote forest and ended up getting beaver fever), navigation & communication (radio skills, semaphore, etc.), PT (Physical training, sports, running, etc.) confidence course (stereotypical obstacle course where you crawl in the mud, climb things and so on while getting yelled at in the rain), leadership classes (making lesson plans, teaching skills) and other stuff I'm probably forgetting about right now, and that's just the Bos'n trade. I also remember doing some gunner stuff sometimes, maybe as punishment, like learning ceremonial rifle drill with a hardass gunnery instructor.

You built a lot of personal relationships there, since it was cadets from all across the country that you'd get to meet and share experiences with, and this was right before the internet really took off, so it was a really big deal at the time. The only real rivalry was between bos'ns and gunners, otherwise everyone was pretty cool with each other. Intimate relationships with other cadets was called fraternization (frat) and was forbidden, but c'mon. When you have a thousand teenage boys and girls living together, obviously they're going to find a way. My first kiss was at cadet camp from a girl from another part of the country.

...

Probably not the kind of summer camp you're talking about, but it was fun to reminisce. Being in the cadets helped me out a lot in building confidence and leadership skills that I still use in day to day life, and it gave me a lot of memories I still look fondly on. Some of my family just immigrated here a few years ago, and my little cousin joined the sea cadets because his brother used to be a sailor, and my mom told him about how I was in it as a kid. This'll be his second year at Quadra, and he's having a fantastic time as a bandie.

Coxswain Balls fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Apr 15, 2015

horribleslob
Nov 23, 2004
It's more fun to be a counselor for one of these things... you get into some pretty sweet poo poo with the other counselors. Remember: you're the only other legal gently caress for a few hundred mile radius... and if you had the foresight to bring weed/alcohol you'll have a great fuckin' time.

Rhymenoserous
May 23, 2008

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

One of the things I occasionally regret never doing was going to some cool summer camp as a kid. Basically I didn't give a gently caress at the time because I was a nerd and also a pussy about not wanting to be away from home. My only experience about those camps comes from TV shows and movies. You know the ones, with the cool camp activities by the lake, rad counselors, comfy cabins, staying up late watching scary movies, and coming back every year to see all your summer friends again. Or in Law and Order SVU where they are all rape centers. So what as summer camp like for you? Was it a fun filled adventure that gave you memories to last a lifetime or was it overpriced garbage that drove your family into the poor house?

I've been to several and you have some pretty big misconceptions going on. Cool camp activities were boring as gently caress, the counselors were mainly playing grabass with eachother, there were no movies and the cabins were insect infested hellholes, oh and the beds were uncomfortable and pooping was an adventure. The zipline was fun. I had more fun doing traditional camping because then I chose my daily activities, set my own hours, and my tent was far more insect/vermin proof than some lovely unmaintained cabin out in the woods.

The entire point of these summer camps isn't fun for the kids, it's fun for the parents because they can gently caress in every room of the house while you are gone.

Problem!
Jan 1, 2007

I am the queen of France.

Rhymenoserous posted:

I've been to several and you have some pretty big misconceptions going on. Cool camp activities were boring as gently caress, the counselors were mainly playing grabass with eachother, there were no movies and the cabins were insect infested hellholes, oh and the beds were uncomfortable and pooping was an adventure. The zipline was fun. I had more fun doing traditional camping because then I chose my daily activities, set my own hours, and my tent was far more insect/vermin proof than some lovely unmaintained cabin out in the woods.

The entire point of these summer camps isn't fun for the kids, it's fun for the parents because they can gently caress in every room of the house while you are gone.

^^Basically this.

I went to a huge summer camp as a kid that had a few different camps going on simultaneously, there were a few sports camps (tennis, running, etc.) and then general summer camp. There was a HUGE difference between the sports camp kids and the regular camp kids. You could tell the regular camp kids were just sent there by their parents to give themselves a break from the little shitheads but the sports camp kids seemed to be there of their own volition because yay sports.

A lot of the camp counselors were foreign and seemed to have been roped into a "summer internship" that was basically cheap/free labor for the camp and they were pretty much hooking up with each other 24/7. Even the toothless horse barn tractor driver guy got some action.

Hulk Smash!
Jul 14, 2004

My family was pretty poor so I don't think it was overpriced. Maybe it was subsidized? I have few memories of camp but I don't think it was garbage. What I remember:

  • Crappy puppet shows in the main hall in the evenings.
  • Lots of hiking and canoeing.
  • Lots of communal dish washing after meals.
  • Trying to figure out a way to pierce a hole in our cabin wall so we could peep on the girls dorm which shared a common wall.
  • The one kid who disappeared for most of a day. The counselors were freaking out and we finally organized a search party. We found him some hours later stuck in a crevasse that was barely wide enough for him. He had fell in it while walking and had been stuck, arms up and not been able to move. No really deep, as the top of his head was only about a foot bellow ground level, but It was so tight that his back and front were raw from the friction of the fall. There was much less unsupervised hiking after that.

Baronash
Feb 29, 2012

So what do you want to be called?
Summer camp was the bomb. I went to a few, and they were all pretty much what you described, minus the part about watching scary movies. Comfy cabins weren't a given. Campers would be split into sections by age group, and each section would be assigned one particular camp site for the week. The camp sites were a mix of cabins and canvas-walled tents, and the cabins usually went to the youngest campers. I slept on a cot under a mosquito net more often than I slept in a comfy bunk bed. I don't think anyone ever really cared, because we were all so jazzed to be at camp.

They all structured the day in pretty much the same way. You'd eat breakfast, then go to your two chosen skill areas (woodworking, archery, arts & crafts, horsemanship, drama, etc.) until lunch. After lunch you could basically do whatever until dinner, so most people would head to the skill areas that they hadn't signed up for and try those out. After dinner, you generally did something with your section until it was time to pack it in.

The camps generally made sure that each week had a theme, and each skill area would have some activity related to that theme. The best one I remember was Western week, where the camp was overrun by bandits trying to get their gold back from the camp director. The archery area would use wanted posters as targets, trail rides would be harassed by the bandits, and towards the end of the week there was a camp-wide contest to be the section that found the most gold (spray-painted rocks), with a special desert as the prize.

Hummingbirds
Feb 17, 2011

I went to a week-long Christian summer camp for five or six years when I was a kid. Despite the fact that by the last time I went, I had stopped believing in Christianity (my mom forced me to go that year because she had already paid the deposit), it was still pretty fun. It's a really high-budget camp because it's been around awhile (my mom and her brothers attended when they were kids).

On the first day you'd check into your cabin (which had relatively comfortable bunk beds, fully equipped bathrooms, and chillingly cold AC) meet your cabin mates, say goodbye to your parents, and then go to the meeting hall for orientation. You would pick four activities to do during the week, with the first two on Tuesday and Wednesday and the other two on Thursday and Friday. I usually picked archery, arts and crafts, "nature" (which consisted of taking walks around the camp and spending time in this building which housed various animals like snakes, snapping turtles, guinea pigs/rabbits, and one year, some baby alligators), and once I was old enough, sail boating (we just got to ride around the lake on open catamarans which was dope as hell).

Every day there would be several activities that the entire age group would do. Stuff like swimming in the camp's pool, going to the camp's roller skating rink, massive water/mud fights (team based), square dances in the meeting hall, "theater nights" where the counselors would put on funny skits for us, and usually on one night during the week we would play manhunt once it got dark. All this stuff was super fun even though personally I never really made friends at camp because I was pretty introverted.

However, as it was a bible camp, each day was peppered with religious meetings of various lengths. Devotion at dawn (15 min), chapel in the evening (about 1.5 hrs or so), and small group 3-4 times a day (30-45 min each time). The small group meetings were the most annoying ones because the counselors were supposed to be teaching us from some curriculum which was boring as hell and they knew it, so by the end of the week they would give up and let us play games like graveyard (where everyone lays on the ground without moving or making noise and one person goes around and tries to make the "dead people" move or laugh without touching them) instead. We also prayed before meals, after "quiet time" (the hour after lunch where we went back to the cabins to nap or read), and had a more personal devotional before bed with our cabin group and counselors, who would afterwards send us to our beds and walk around to do a short prayer with each kid.

The counselors were at least 18 but none of them were much older than that. You could attend as a camper until the year you graduated high school, so I'm not sure who the counselors for the high school camp were. Maybe college students. I never really noticed any questionable fraternization between the counselors but all of them were seriously religious.

We got three hots a day and the food was surprisingly good for the volume of kids and counselors that had to be fed. It was not family-style like I've heard is the case at most camps; you went through a line like in a school cafeteria. I was a vegan for a couple years and the cooks were extremely accommodating and would make special dishes for me and the other veg kids.

If you had to take medicine on a regular basis you would get called out a few minutes before each meal was over and go to the camp clinic to take them. If you happened to get a headache and your mom hadn't signed in any Advil or whatever for you at the clinic, tough poo poo, they couldn't administer anything that wasn't given to them by the parents. Better hope you didn't get a cold because you'd be blowing your nose into toilet paper for a week.

Outdoors it was ungodly humid and the mosquitoes were killer. The cabins would always have massive spider webs with a dozen of these on each one so you couldn't walk to close to any buildings. The lake was full of gators. But there was a really beautiful illuminated cross on the lake as well, and on the last night of camp at the chapel meeting the pastor would get all serious and ask everyone to devote their lives to Jesus and the curtains were pulled back from a bay window behind the pulpit so the cross could be seen. It always ended with a bunch of kids sobbing like that scene in Jesus Camp (although Methodists don't speak in tongues).

The next day we would wake up, go to devotion, meet up with our parents and go to breakfast. Then you would try to convince your mom to buy you poo poo from the gift store before heading home.

Anyway, that's my extremely in-depth description of summer camp. I haven't thought about it in awhile, thanks for posting so I could reminisce.

Jamwad Hilder
Apr 18, 2007

surfin usa
at summer camp when I was 14 a girl showed us her boobs and also there was this weird kid who threw frogs as hard as he could against trees, and that's basically all I remember. Sometimes we swam in the lake.

Dr. Platypus
Oct 25, 2007
I worked two months at a sleepaway camp back in 2012, so if anyone has any questions about the counselor end of it I'd be happy to answer.

bytebark
Sep 26, 2004

I hate Illinois Nazis
I went to (boy) scout camp, one or two weeks at a time, for four or five summers. I think there was more actual substance to the "educational" aspect of the camp, since the goal was to earn outdoors-oriented merit badges you couldn't get back in the city. My experiences there were mixed (mostly positive), but I was a picky camper. The camp I went to was pretty run-down, and (probably due to some variation of "liability"), scout troops didn't cook their own food - it was instead delivered in hot packs before every meal to the campsite, and consisted of the same mass-produced, tasteless crap you can find in most school cafeterias. They also got rid of hot water in the bathrooms after the first couple years I went because people complained that a scout could get burned while taking a shower, which to this day I still think was loving stupid. We slept in old-school canvas tents (provided by the camp) with wooden floorboards, which did little to keep insects/animals out.

Also, if you were a first year camper, you were required to join a specific group of first year campers (for the first week, out of two) where they'd go to the pool one day, go to the rifle range the next, etc. I had no interest in shooting sports but wanted to do other stuff so I thought this weeklong orientation was a waste of time, but I imagine they do it this way as a CYA move so that if some kid walks off into the woods and dies of exposure, they can say they received directions beforehand and it's not the camp's fault. What was fun about it? When we did cook our own food (usually dessert), it was fantastic. Anything involving the campfire of course, and going canoeing out on the lake. (I probably would have liked swimming too, except they had a pool for that which was always arctic cold, even in July.) The camp itself (and surround areas) had a fair amount of man-made history in them, and it was neat to go on a hike and see ruins of an old oil well or something.

Of course now that I'm older, I've pulled the place up on Google Earth and discovered that the camp itself, while substantial in size, is literally surrounded by suburban sprawl.

Waterfowl
Apr 18, 2005
I went to traditional sleepaway camp a couple times (woods, swimming, hiking, dodgeball, insensitive native american mascots) as well as jesusy camps and nerd camps(debate camp, couple summers at college in high school to study/research).

Most of the ones I did were free or low cost so I don't remember there being a financial issue. I just remember camp as being tons of fun regardless of the subject(even church camp was a ton of fun).
I especially liked the high school subject specific camps(maybe just because they were longer) which were basically like freshman year of college without the booze. Lots of kids away from home who don't know anyone either and have something in common with you(they're at nerd camp too) and you spend 24 hours a day together so I made some very close friends.

Der Luftwaffle
Dec 29, 2008

Coxswain Balls posted:

Sea Cadet stuff

Wow, was funding massively increased in the last decade or are Sea and Air just better equipped? I was stuck as an Army cadet for 2 years in an engineer regiment which consisted at home and at camp of the critical engineering practices of nothing but endless marching, PT and biannual fuckery with air rifles on a boring rear end CFB in the middle of nowhere. What a ripoff.

Actually that's a good takeaway message for the OP; it all depends on who's in charge, if they give a poo poo and are being paid/funded well, campers will have a great time doing interesting stuff. If not then you'll be packing chalk and making ticks on a wall. I had friends in private schools who did amazing things at camp and then I had friends in low income area public schools who did a whole lot of nothing during colder off-seasons because rentals were cheaper.

Terrorist Fistbump
Jan 29, 2009

by Nyc_Tattoo
Got my first handjob from the girl selling ice cream at the "trading post". The same week I smoked weed for the first time and then immediately started shooting trap for a merit badge. Being 15 was awesome.

Geoj
May 28, 2008

BITTER POOR PERSON

bytebark posted:

I went to (boy) scout camp, one or two weeks at a time, for four or five summers

Same. For me it was kind of like an extra week of school, at least during the day when you had to do merit badge classes. Wasn't something I really looked forward to but I didn't hate it enough to not go.

One year I went to Philmont with my troop, one of a handful of "high adventure" camps in the US. Basically a trek consists of 10 days backpacking in the backcountry of New Mexico. Definitely worth the $1200 price tag (probably higher now, that was in the late 90s,) to this day is one of the few things I've done that would qualify as "bucket list" material.

AdorableStar
Jul 13, 2013

:patriot:


Any :gooncamp: moments?

Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001

Der Luftwaffle posted:

Wow, was funding massively increased in the last decade or are Sea and Air just better equipped? I was stuck as an Army cadet for 2 years in an engineer regiment which consisted at home and at camp of the critical engineering practices of nothing but endless marching, PT and biannual fuckery with air rifles on a boring rear end CFB in the middle of nowhere. What a ripoff.

Actually that's a good takeaway message for the OP; it all depends on who's in charge, if they give a poo poo and are being paid/funded well, campers will have a great time doing interesting stuff. If not then you'll be packing chalk and making ticks on a wall. I had friends in private schools who did amazing things at camp and then I had friends in low income area public schools who did a whole lot of nothing during colder off-seasons because rentals were cheaper.

My last year in the cadets was around 15 years ago, so for all I know it could be a lot different today. I never actually had much contact with any Army Cadet corps, and I never had much of an idea of what you guys even did. What you're describing sounds like the Gunnery program, but the kids who were in Gunnery volunteered for it and loved doing that kind of stuff. We did a bit of cross-training with the nearby Air Cadet squadron, and they didn't seem to have any complaints about what they did. When I went skydiving a couple of years ago, we were sharing an airstrip with some Air Cadets who were learning how to fly gliders, which was really cool.

That's disappointing to hear about your experiences, since all of the people I know who were in the sea and air cadets seem to have taken a lot away from it. One guy who was in my corps was in the newspaper a couple of years ago being interviewed because he joined the Navy and was on a ship with our hometown as its namesake that was patrolling the horn of Africa. It was really funny to read, because I remember him being super quiet and gentle (dude fuckin' loved Titanic, up to and including owning a piece of it), and here he is talking about how he literally battles pirates on the high seas.

You're bang on about the people running things being incredibly important for the kids not having a lovely experience. My old corps that my cousin is in is hurting for civilian instructors, and if I lived in the same town I'd volunteer in a heartbeat. My corps had tons of volunteers in my time, so we had our regular parade nights on Tuesday, marksmanship at the rifle range on Thursday (Either Lee-Enfield No.8 trainers, or fancy Anschutz biathlon rifles, both in .22LR), and band/parade drill practice on Sunday. There was other stuff throughout the year, like biathlon in the winter, sail training in the summer, band/drill competitions and so on, but I don't think they've been able to do things to that extent in recent years because of the volunteer shortage.

Thanks to this thread, I looked around and found an archive of the HMCS Quadra picture galleries from 2000-present. It's really cool seeing my experiences there in the first albums, and seeing my cousin in the most recent ones.

http://cadetsbc.smugmug.com/HMCSQuadraCSTC

Griz
May 21, 2001


Jamwad Hilder posted:

at summer camp when I was 14 a girl showed us her boobs and also there was this weird kid who threw frogs as hard as he could against trees, and that's basically all I remember. Sometimes we swam in the lake.

I went to camp for a week in highschool and all I remember is
- being told not to swim in the nasty scum-covered pond because of snapping turtles
- a counselor demonstrating why we shouldn't gently caress with turtles by getting one to bite clean through a big stick
- canoeing on the pond right after that and trying really hard not to flip over
- waking up with a terrible backache and not knowing why until everyone else in the cabin started asking who rolled off the top bunk in the middle of the night

Zaftig
Jan 21, 2008

It's infectious
I went to summer camp for three years and one year as a CIT, and I adored it. It was a farm camp in the middle of nowhere and all the counselors were former campers or pulled from the theater department of a near-ish college. Campers were split by age group, with three cabins for boys and five for girls. The only electricity was in bathrooms and the main dining area. Days were split between farm chores, learning about horses, activities (sports, crafts, writing, drama, and singing), swimming during the hottest part of the day, meals, and hanging out around the campfire. There were special events every session (the Boys vs. Girls water fight was highly anticipated, as well as a carnival day where each cabin ran a booth of a sort).

It was pretty expensive, but my mom had finally come into some money and it was the only thing that made me happy after we'd moved away from all my friends and my dad died.

I am still friends with a bunch of the people I met there, including counselors. I didn't enjoy being a CIT as much, but I think that's because I wasn't quite ready to let go of being a camper.

The most action I ever got was holding hands with a boy on a hay ride. Apparently there was WAY more going on in that department everywhere else in the camp, but I was pretty naive and thought our hand-holding was hot stuff. We talked on the phone every Saturday for years after that. He's gay.

My boyfriend was a counselor for a Christian day camp (after he was no longer religious) and said the weirdest part was having a bunch of little girls have crushes on you, which instantly made me feel bad for the counselors I had crushes on when I was 13.

Teabag Dome Scandal
Mar 19, 2002


Smellrose
I was an assistant director at a camp for a number of years and I'm sorry to everyone that went to a poo poo camp. These can easily be the worst experience of your life instead of being transformative. I think that you can really lose out on what you can get out of these adventures by being a little too old or by having the camp have a culture more for the counselors instead of for the kids. I really encourage everyone to give working at one a try for a summer because you can make a huge difference in a kids life in addition to creating the kinds of friendship with other counselors that only come about by being stuck with the same group of people for 2 months in the woods. That said, I do love hearing about peoples hosed up camp experiences.

If anyone has any questions about being a big dog at a sleepaway camp I guess you can ask?

Baronash
Feb 29, 2012

So what do you want to be called?

Raymn posted:

I was an assistant director at a camp for a number of years and I'm sorry to everyone that went to a poo poo camp. These can easily be the worst experience of your life instead of being transformative. I think that you can really lose out on what you can get out of these adventures by being a little too old or by having the camp have a culture more for the counselors instead of for the kids. I really encourage everyone to give working at one a try for a summer because you can make a huge difference in a kids life in addition to creating the kinds of friendship with other counselors that only come about by being stuck with the same group of people for 2 months in the woods. That said, I do love hearing about peoples hosed up camp experiences.

If anyone has any questions about being a big dog at a sleepaway camp I guess you can ask?

How do they hire important people at summer camps? Did you just see a job listing and apply, or do they generally promote from within?

Nine of Eight
Apr 28, 2011


LICK IT OFF, AND PUT IT BACK IN
Dinosaur Gum
I worked four summers doing general counselor stuff at a scout camp, and then worked another two summers as camp nurse for a subsidized charity camp. Can confirm that the staff are statistically usually loving each other blind when the campers aren't around. I've seen way too many lice, laughed at an eighteen year old counselor who somehow got shingles, and spent a lot of time making GBS threads myself when I didn't have the resources or knowledge to deal with some variety of funky disease.

Oh, and gently caress Tarzan ropes dead, the phrase "potential double spinal injury" loosens my bowels every time I think of it.

bytebark
Sep 26, 2004

I hate Illinois Nazis

Geoj posted:

Same. For me it was kind of like an extra week of school, at least during the day when you had to do merit badge classes. Wasn't something I really looked forward to but I didn't hate it enough to not go.

One year I went to Philmont with my troop, one of a handful of "high adventure" camps in the US. Basically a trek consists of 10 days backpacking in the backcountry of New Mexico. Definitely worth the $1200 price tag (probably higher now, that was in the late 90s,) to this day is one of the few things I've done that would qualify as "bucket list" material.

I don't think I ever looked at scout camp as being like an extra week of school, but yeah, there was some things about it that I didn't care for. The camp I usually went to would send out a representative to troops within the scout council (which owned the camp) and they'd show an ACTION-PACKED VIDEO of the scouts blasting poo poo with rifles, climbing towers made out of logs, and screaming across a lake on a hovercraft. Then you'd get there and find out that 99% of the time at the rifle range was spend BEING SAFE and 1% was actually shooting stuff (not a bad thing, but disappointing when you're 12), you can't climb on any of the towers built out of logs and rope because the staff are paranoid you'll fall, and the hovercraft is derelict with a broken propeller and has been for some time.

I never went to Philmont but kind of wish I had. Supposedly one of the troops I was in had gotten the necessary "slots" for some senior scouts as soon as they went up for grabs one year, but for reasons which were unexplained the trip never materialized.

Some stories I'm remembering:

Bears

One year, rather than going to the usual run-down camp all Chicago-area scouts usually attend (Owassipe, in western Michigan) my troop elected to go to a camp in upstate New York. I had just joined this troop (transferred from another) and while I liked the people, the scouts were generally not as outdoorsy as they could have been. Had no idea how to light a gas lantern, that sort of thing. Lessons can be learned the hard way, though. At this camp in NY, some of the troop intended on going on one of these Philmont-type wilderness treks during the week we were there, and I was one of them, until we got there and the majority of those wanting to go decided to make it a day longer than we originally planned. For reasons I can't remember clearly, my dad and I both thought this was a bad idea and backed out of the trek. Which was a good idea, it turned out. The day after that group left for their wilderness trek, I was walking around the camp somewhere and saw a couple of the scouts who were supposed to be gone. They adamantly refused to talk about why they had returned; later on it was revealed that in one day, they'd managed to swamp a canoe, a scout was injured, and lost most of their food to a bear. The one scout's injuries weren't severe but that wasn't the last we'd hear of bears during that trip, though. (these in particular were black bears)

Before we left for this trip, one of the scout leaders had some connection with an outdoor equipment manufacturer, and most of the troop was able to get these fairly nice hiking backpacks for cheap. Including one of the less outdoorsy scouts - let's call him London, because that was his name. London had two defining traits: 1), he always had junk food on him, and 2), he never listened to anything the leaders him. While London was being London, the bears inhabiting the scout camp were being, well, bears, which like to find stuff to eat and have good noses to accomplish this task. Since London 1), always had junk food, and 2), never heeded anyone's advice on getting rid of it or sealing it in a plastic bag, bears regularly visited his tent over the course of the week. By the end of the week, bears had torn his brand-new backpack to shreds.

Bears also managed to ruin a soccer ball and damaged a rental car during the course of that week. I saw the soccer ball incident and it was hilarious. Some of the scouts were kicking it around in a clearing, and at one point it rolled into the woods ... where a bear was waiting. The bear grabbed the ball, studied it for a minute, then let it go. It hadn't been punctured but the ball but the leather covering was torn up, and the super-hyper kid who brought it was pissed. Didn't see the bear try to break into the rental car, but we woke up one morning and there were claw marks in a seal around one of the windows. Makes sense since we were storing food in there (easier than stringing up a bear bag) and I think they returned the car without the rental place noticing the damage.

The Smelly Kid

One year there was a newish kid in the troop who absolutely hated the outdoors. He said that since his mom was a police officer, he didn't have anything to worry about because she'd save him if he was drowning, etc. Let's call him A. A was there for two weeks, and refused to shower. While refusing to shower, he also wore the same clothes every day! After maybe ten days, his smell became bad enough that he was told in no uncertain terms that he WOULD shower and was dragged to the campsite's bathroom/shower building; an adult leader waited outside to ensure the task was completed. I don't believe he stayed in the troop for very much longer.

Crazy Dave

The camp my troop usually visited had an infamous staff member named Dave. He worked at the camp's ecology / conservation area, where scouts would go to fulfill the requirements of nature-related merit badges, and I thought he was an rear end in a top hat. He was the guy to go to when you did the (mandatory) Environmental Science merit badge, which was time consuming enough (you had to go there for at least a half-day for five days in a row to get all the requirements done) when the staff member wanted to help you out, which Dave clearly didn't, or at least not without insulting the scouts, telling them they were stupid, etc. (He'd also go tearing around the camp's dirt roads in a battered BMW - almost hit me once) I think it took me two weeks to get that stupid badge, and I later heard from one of my troop's adult leaders that Dave would sit in staff meetings and mock the scouts, saying none of them were going to get his stupid merit badge. Apparently some higher-up at the camp took notice of this, as the next year he was reassigned to working on the back of one of the camp's garbage trucks. I didn't believe it until I saw him on it one day; he didn't look too happy.

Which reminds me, some of the people who work at scout camps (and maybe regular summer camps too, I dunno) are just loving weird. Not necessarily creepy-weird, but just plain old weird. Although the last time I was at a scout camp was 10+ years ago and the weirdness I'm thinking of might have just been "super religious and conservative and wanting to inflict these views upon boys age 12-18 for poo poo pay all summer." I remember that while multiple church services were offered at the camp's chapel (Catholic, Jewish, etc) it was more or less required that you had to go to at least one of them.

Teabag Dome Scandal
Mar 19, 2002


Smellrose

JohnSherman posted:

How do they hire important people at summer camps? Did you just see a job listing and apply, or do they generally promote from within?

The American Camping Association has an email list where camps post their open positions for jobs that require experience or a specific skill set. The community is also very very close knit (both regionally and nationally) so if there is an open position, friends let other friends know. You'll also have staff that were campers, became CITs, became seasonal staff, and then got hired on full time. Some colleges have outdoor education programs that bigger camps will recruit directly from at yearly job fairs.

Dr. Platypus
Oct 25, 2007

Raymn posted:

The American Camping Association has an email list where camps post their open positions for jobs that require experience or a specific skill set. The community is also very very close knit (both regionally and nationally) so if there is an open position, friends let other friends know. You'll also have staff that were campers, became CITs, became seasonal staff, and then got hired on full time. Some colleges have outdoor education programs that bigger camps will recruit directly from at yearly job fairs.

I saw a classified ad in my college newspaper (like five states away from where the camp is), applied and got hired over the phone.

Violet_Sky
Dec 5, 2011



Fun Shoe
I was around 8 or 9 when I went to my first summer camp for disabled people. I don't remember much except that they did week-long story lines about some dude that was causing trouble. I do recall there being a mix of physically and mentally disabled kids. We all ranged in degrees of severity. (I was moderately physically disabled, normal cognitive function) Some kids could be normal summer camp kids if they didn't have severe ADHD or whatever. Others were so severely physically/mentally disabled that they couldn't talk and functioned on the same level as a three year old.

I don't recall if my parents sent me to camp so that they could have sex, but joke's on them, I'm never leaving the house again. :reject:

Teabag Dome Scandal
Mar 19, 2002


Smellrose

Dr. Platypus posted:

I saw a classified ad in my college newspaper (like five states away from where the camp is), applied and got hired over the phone.

We never hired anyone sight unseen but we definitely went to summer camp specific job fairs and posted fliers at the local colleges. Our seasonal staff was usually only about 30 so we tended to not go far but larger camps would need to easily. My director would hit a few states around Arizona when she worked out there.

Zaftig
Jan 21, 2008

It's infectious

bytebark posted:

The Smelly Kid

We had one of those too, down to wearing the same shirt every day. I think they ended up dragging him into the shower with the clothes on and scrubbing at his arms and face until he gave up and took his clothes off to shower properly. I realize how creepy that sounds, but the showers were all communal so it's slightly less creepy.

Dr. Platypus
Oct 25, 2007

Raymn posted:

We never hired anyone sight unseen but we definitely went to summer camp specific job fairs and posted fliers at the local colleges. Our seasonal staff was usually only about 30 so we tended to not go far but larger camps would need to easily. My director would hit a few states around Arizona when she worked out there.

I would say my camp had a much more lax policy on hiring unseen, since at least half our counsellors were British

Omnikin
May 29, 2007

Press 'E' for Medic
I went to a Christian summer camp for several years and it was pretty awesome. They were week long stays in the heart of the Adirondacks, plenty of time spent in religious groups but on the whole it wasn't really overwhelming. They offered in-camp stays ranging from 3rd-12th grade (divided into three year groups, like 3rd-5th one week and 6-8th the next) and every week would have a small group of eight to ten kids doing outcamp with two counselors. Think long hiking trips, canoe/kayak trips, sailing, etc.

I really enjoyed my first week there and went back next summer for two weeks with my best friend tagging along. Our church had a program going where you volunteered for something minor 1x a week at worship and they'd pay for a week. It wasn't pricey then anyway, but it was cool to earn it yourself.

The best part was having my dad as a cabin counselor (eight kids max per cabin) because he wouldn't really push the religious stuff on us and at night would turn a blind eye to our hijinks or offer better suggestions on how to gently caress with other cabins. Like the first time we thought we were badass and wanted to bang on the back of their cabin to scare 'em at midnight. He suggested to instead pry open the fire escape and roll a rock across the floor. We got away with doing that a dozen times over the week without a single reprimand.

It was a pretty mellow camp, to my knowledge most of the campers stayed on the making-out side of relationships but the summer staff (college age+) probably enjoyed their free time.

Tons of activities during the day from recreation to nature to arts and crafts. Played a ton of foursquare and went sailing every chance I got. Made a bunch of good friends from all across the northeast that I still hang out with to this day.

I ended up volunteering as a student counselor there for two summers, that was pretty awesome. Taking a 4th grader sailing for the first time and watching their face light up as they take control for the first time is rewarding. I may go back as a cabin counselor this summer or next despite not being religious anymore. It was a really great place to spend some time growing up.

A+ would do it all over again

ed- the campwide games we would play at night were amazing also. Less hide and seek / kickball, more murder mystery (counselors disperse throughout campgrounds and you have an hour to find 'em all and ask each three questions to figure it out) and gold rush games where 'treasure' is hidden everywhere and bandits chase you down with pantyhose filled with flour to steal your goods. Really miss the fun poo poo like that

Omnikin fucked around with this message at 20:19 on May 2, 2015

A GIANT PARSNIP
Apr 13, 2010

Too much fuckin' eggnog


I did two week long summer camps when I was a kid - one through school and one through church. I remember the food was bad but we were hungry as gently caress so no one cared. I also remember being bitten by a lot of mosquitoes and trying not to tip over in a canoe, as well as "team games" that involved a lot of kids running around and being a bunch of dumb kids. I was definitely too young to care about poo poo like "Do I think Christ is real" and "Should I read the bible", so the aggressive "love Jesus" stuff at the church camp just kinda rolled right off me. In retrospect it's pretty obvious that everyone who worked there was loving each other, but as a kid that's not really a thing you're thinking about.

I guess maybe it's a good thing I went to them, because as an adult I'm well aware that my ideal version of "camping" is drinking while on a hotel balcony. When it comes to life experiences you've missed out on, I'd rank it around never having a real Philly Cheese Steak sandwich or a real Chicago Hot Dog - someone might talk a bit of poo poo to you in a very specific situation, but you certainly didn't miss out on something that would define your life.

Chicken Butt
Oct 27, 2010
Man, I had no idea that the "Christian summer camp" thing was so prevalent here in the U.S., but I guess I shouldn't be surprised ...

I never went to summer camp when I was a kid, and I regret it just like the OP. That's probably because I have an idealized perception of it from TV and movies, though.

Despite the negative reports from some people here, I would love to send my kid to one when he's a bit older. He's grown up in a city and I think it would be a good experience for him ... I'd love to find one that maybe has a more science-y focus on studying the plants and animals and rocks and so on though; despite being an urban kid, he loves that kind of stuff. Did any of you goons go to a place like that, or know of one? There are lots of places that you can find online, but getting a personal recommendation would be great.

A GIANT PARSNIP
Apr 13, 2010

Too much fuckin' eggnog


If you want to give your children an appreciation for nature you should take them out to camp sites and plan hikes and poo poo, not send them off to an extended daycare that happens to have archery and craft classes in the woods. Our national parks are amazing, and you'll both be better off for visiting them together.

JibbaJabberwocky
Aug 14, 2010

I went to Eagle's Nest Camp in NC for a few years and that camp was the poo poo. I'm really depressed that I'm far, far too old for camp anymore. I guess it was probably because I started going to camp at a time in my life when things weren't going so great at home and I could always count on having a loving fantastic time at camp. So I really cherish the memories I have of camp from that time. It was just a really ideal time in my childhood that I can always look back on fondly. From the other stories here I'm guessing I went to a pretty high tier camp considering we had really pretty nice cabins and never slept in a tent unless we were on a trip away from camp. They were still definitely cabins, so screened windows and all that jazz, but nothing like canvas walled tents. I think most of the NC camps are pretty classy though, as far as camps go. My friends went to some other camps in the area and had a pretty similar experience.

My experience at camp was definitely cool counselors, swimming, and awesome activities though the camp didn't allow electronics so no movies. We did scary stories at least once a session though so that's similar. I literally took a class one year where the whole point was to try and discover all of the exciting ways we could set things on fire. I also did ceramics, horseback riding, white water canoeing, and rock climbing on a fairly regular basis. On the weekends we had camp-wide activities and would do awesome poo poo like do a camp wide capture the flag game or do camp Olympics. Throughout the time at camp, we'd be given hints that would all lead up to the theme of a final party the last night at camp.

I'm still in touch with some of my camp friends 10 years later, which says something because I'm super lovely at keeping in touch with people.

I also went to nerd camp when I was a preteen and it was pretty fun. I got invited to a program hosted by Johns Hopkins based on standardized test scores from when I was ten. I was in the drama section so it felt a lot less like work than I think some of the other sections (like math). My camp was at Mt. Holyoak and we stayed in the dorms there for the program and ate in the cafeteria, both of which were really nice. We had classes during the day which pretty much just consisted of improv and reading and discussing Shakespeare. We did go to a few productions in the town as "field trips" as well but most of our time was spent in class. After dinner we were allowed to pick activities we'd enjoy doing and there were some mega-awkward camp dances as well, so it wasn't all work.

My most distinct memory from that camp was the last night there. I was supposed to be getting on a plane home with a small group of other kids but when we got to the airport, there was a "unaccompanied minor" fee that the camp was supposed to cover. What this meant was that all of us kids couldn't get on our planned flights and they had to reschedule everything for the next day. Which shouldn't really have been a problem but for me it ended up causing tons of issues. My family used the time when I was away at camp to move across the country. They didn't have a phone set up at the new house and didn't have a cell phone because they're basically stuck in the dark ages. So what this meant is that my parents went to pick me up at the airport and I just wasn't on the plane and no one could contact them about why I wasn't on the plane. They didn't have the phone number for the camp handy and so couldn't call to figure out what the gently caress was going on. Basically my parents slept in the airport overnight panicking about why I wasn't there. I, meanwhile, pigged out on pizza and watched the Last Unicorn with my buddies completely oblivious to the clusterfuck. Then on my two flights back I sat next to a US Marshall who gave me his cookie and a little old lady who shared stories about her Bernese Mountain Dog with me the whole flight. So I was completely content while my parents were (very understandably) losing their poo poo. But I made it home in one piece so, mission accomplished!

I've also been to a poo poo-ton of day camps but those stories are less interesting. Camps are awesome and I'm definitely sending my kids to one!

ToxicToast
Dec 7, 2006
Thanks, I'm flattered.
I went to a band camp for a couple years. It was held at a local university during the summer and honestly it was pretty awesome. Since it was at the university we would stay in empty dorm rooms on campus which was amazing for me as a middle schooler/freshmen in high school. There were boy floors and girl floors and it was always fun sneaking into the girls rooms. I had the same floor counselor for the two years I went and he was an older bald guy who brought a TV and just stayed locked up in his room watching TV all night. As long as you did not get louder than his TV he seriously did not care what went on.

Since it was band camp we would spend a couple hours a day practicing for a concert at the end of the week but besides that we mostly spent time goofing off around the campus. In the evenings they would have events planned for us, the biggest one was the dance on the last night of camp. It was always filled with awkward camp romance and lots and lots of tears. The first year I went was the first time I danced with a girl!

Probably the best thing about the camp was we could go to the student union any time we wanted and there was a pretty awesome arcade there that had Soul Calibur. I still remember my friend's girl friend being a beast at the game and at one point she won over 30 fights in a row with Knightmare.

Honestly, it was a pretty fun experience but I just did it for one week for a couple summers in a row. Not for sure how I would have liked doing it much more than that.

Malcolm
May 11, 2008
Band camp was pretty great, I went several years as well and it was usually a really good time. No camping, just occupying dorm rooms of the University and getting into adolescent mischief for a week while honing those sick concert band skills. The formula for my band camp was identical to the one above, down to the girls/boys floors, SUB with a good arcade, and big dance the last night of camp. I imagine it is a pretty popular thing to do across the US, and rightfully so. Band owns, jazz band owns harder, and summer camp is a good place to meet girls in a minimally chaperoned environment. Send your musically inclined children to music camp.

Lincoln`s Wax
May 1, 2000
My other, other car is a centipede filled with vaginas.
From 6th to 9th grade, I went to a week long camp run by the church I used to go to. It's a big megachurch, so there were several hundred kids at the camp. Guys and girls saw each other usually only at meal time and evening service. Sucked. rear end. So hard. The last year I was there, my mom actually came and got me on the second night because she knew I was miserable. The first few years, the cabins didn't have any A/C- so imagine a week of being in a Florida swamp that stayed in the mid-80's at night with full humidity. In the mornings we had to do up our beds and cabin and have a military-style inspection, depending on who the "leader" was, it ranged from annoying to insufferable. They gave you a book full of bible verses and you had to memorize one each day before you got to go out. If I remember the schedule, it was something like-
Up at 7
Breakfast
Class
Softball
Lunch
Class
Some type of lame group activity- I think twice during the week we got to go to the pool.
Dinner
Evening service (you had to go back, fight for shower time, get dressed in church clothes before service)
Half hour of free time
Bed

It was seriously miserable. Softball games were seriously all about trying to get off the field and into the shade as much as possible. Classes were dumb poo poo, I remember one of them was for "manly christian etiquette", the rest were just longer versions of sunday school class. No real drama or secret orgies though, the sides of the camp were pretty far apart and I don't think anyone had much chances of discretely meeting up. I think the biggest scandal was when some kids discovered the drink machine would return change any time you hit the button and we all got burned because some idiot made off with $10 in quarters.

bigperm
Jul 10, 2001
some obscure reference
The first time I went to bible camp in the mountains, the guy driving the church van we rode in called a black dude a friend of the family, windows rolled down to his face while stopped at a red light. That was when I decided that I wasn't a christian.

The only other passengers were his son and daughter, both were younger than me and they went to different schools so that (and they next year that I went) was the only time I saw them.

The son died fighting in Iraq and the daughter got pregnant in high school.

There was a guy at camp who claimed he was a vampire and hung a bed sheet from the top bunk to block out his bed. He said it was to keep the sun out but we all knew he was masturbating.

The counselor in our cabin was creepy and poked his head in on kids he thought were taking too long of a shower.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Geoj
May 28, 2008

BITTER POOR PERSON

ToxicToast posted:

Since it was band camp...we mostly spent time goofing off around the campus.

Malcolm posted:

Band camp was pretty great

Your experience at band camp sounds infinitely better than mine.

Mine consisted of five and a half days, 14 hours/day of constant drill & practice for marching season. Up at 6, shower & breakfast until 7 then practice & testing music until 8. Field practice until break for lunch at noon, sectionals from 1-2:30, then more field practice until dinner at 6. Back out on the field from 7-9, penalty wing if you didn't have all of your music memorized for the day's deadline (free time if you did) from 9-10 then showers and more free time until lights out at 11.

And we weren't even that competitive - there were some schools that were there for two or three weeks.

  • Locked thread