Volunteer Camp Counselor For The Brooklyn Jesuit Prep

Over the course of last year’s summer, specifically the month of July I worked as a volunteer camp counselor for the Brooklyn Jesuit Prep(B.J.P) summer camp. This camp was held at Fairfield Prep on the second floor of Berchmans as well as in and around the circle at Loyola Drive on the Fairfield University campus and Loyola Hall. I volunteered for the afternoon sessions of the summer camp, so my experience was vastly different from those who volunteered for the morning sessions and helped tutor and educate the children. Instead, I helped and lead the middle school children in games and other activities which they didn’t have enough counselors or volunteers to do. I played games with them ranging from dodgeball to kickball and rugby, and even

In music, I would attempt to lead a group of rowdy sixth graders to learn how to play or use instruments like the glockenspiel or boomsticks. I say attempt, as often they would get distracted and wail on the boom sticks but I did my best to make sure they learned how to play twinkle twinkle little star and the other music we received. In arts and crafts, I helped the kids learn how to use perler beads, would suggest colors for the lanyards as well as cut the cords for the lanyards, and a myriad of other small things. The people I was serving were an intriguing group, because I had heard that they were intercity boys and girls and my mom has had told me that I wouldn’t be able to control them or relate to them, but I soon found her to be wrong. While a few of them were ‘intercity’, many of them were easy to talk to and quite respectful, including the other counselors who came with the camp. In fact, one of my favorite memories from the camp is talking with a seventh grader by the name of Antoine who was called the fifth Ninja Turtle because he looked somewhat like a Ninja Turtle, but he was quite funny and joked about this all the

Typically Jesuits undergo a discernment process to see where God is directing them in life and then act on their decision they arrive at. However, I didn’t know of Discernment during Sophomore year and so I didn’t undergo rigorous questioning as to what I wanted to do like many Jesuits typically do. As Ignatius would write in his spiritual exercises, my decision was a clear end(will), an obvious decision to make that requires no real forethought or Discernment. Simply, I needed something during the summer to do and I wanted to get some of my service hours done prior to junior year, because I knew it would be a busy year. So in order to kill two birds with one stone so to speak, I decided to sign up for B.J.P’s summer camp, Montmartre. Originally, I was just going to get the service hours I needed to, in order to finish the junior year service requirements. This would have only required me to do about a week as I had already done Appalachia which was 20 hours, and B.J.P was about 2 hours a day and 5 days a week. However, as I finished my week I felt feelings of disgust at myself for wanting to just get my service done as quickly as possible. This was compounded by mother who upon hearing of how few volunteers the camp had(maybe two at most for a group of 20-25 disorderly middle school boys or girls) decided to take it upon herself to volunteer during the morning. To my