Personal Narrative: My Experience Of Being An L. I. T.

ect of being an L.I.T. was the fact it was at the La Jolla YMCA. I was a camper there for about seven years before becoming an L.I.T. This meant that I was familiar with the facility, counselors, and in some cases even the campers. It felt like a second home to me and I knew the routine well. I also have great memories of summer camp so being an L.I.T. was super fun. The least comfortable aspect was probably disciplining the campers. I am a passive person so at first yelling at the kids when they broke the rules was rather hard. I didn 't want any of them to get mad at me. However, once they started to be really bad I was able to be stern with the campers.

How did this experience make you feel?

This experience made me feel different things.

The experiences I had volunteering at the YMCA had a very great ipact on me. I learned a lot about responsibilty. This was my third year being an L.I.T., but it was the first year I really felt myself taking more of a leadership role. When I was younger, I didn 't really understand how hard it was to run something like a camp. I didn 't understand how draining it could be to resolve conflicts, stop tantrums or keep six year olds from hurting themselves or others. In some cases, there were campers who had never learned wrong from right or basic responsibility. In those cases you had to teach them. I worked with one camp where almost none of the campers spoke English. This experience made me realize how hard it must be to live in a country where most people can 't speak your language. However, despite all this I think the experience that impacted me the most was making connections with the campers. I met so many wonderful kids and learned a lot from them. There are kids that I 've seen grow up and I still see some of them even now. Overall, being an L.I.T. has taught me a lot about growing up, taking responsibility, and being a role model for

I can keep this experience alive in a couple of different ways. I hope that next summer I can be an L.I.T. again. I think that it;s really fun to see kids after a school year because they 've matured so much. Sometimes, I see kids who were in camps I was an L.I.T. for and it makes so happy to talk to them. Also, when I turn sixteen I hope to work at the gymnastics program at the YMCA and hopefully I could coach some of the kids that I worked with over the summer. Lastly, I hope to be able to impliment what I 've learned during my time as an L.I.T. into everyday life. I hope that I am now more assertive, appreciative, and responsible in all aspects