summer camp(s)

I started a summer job last week at a kid’s summer camp in Baltimore. I’m the Theater Director and we’re putting on 2 productions over the course of 6 weeks. It’s a ton of work, but made even more so because I’ve never done anything like this before, so it’s kind of a steep learning curve. I feel prepared for the technical side of it, but not the dealing-with-kids side of it. The kids showed up yesterday and they are all really interesting and different. There’s some really nice ones and polite ones and they are all very energetic and want to learn, which is great. There’s also a couple who you worry might completely test your patience. What I learned quickly yesterday is that I understand now why teachers get the training they do. There is a way to understand kids and react to them and lead them that I simply don’t have a grasp on yet. I tend to relate to kids as if they are small adults. I speak and interact with them like that on the assumptions that 1. it will work and they’ll understand me 2. that they want to be treated like adults.

Also, it doesn’t help that last week was a bit killer, crashing back down to this planet, as I feel I did. I don’t think I mentally arrived at home until this past Saturday—almost a full week after I physically arrived. The writer’s week away was so amazing and so different. I was so removed from the news of the world. I just really didn’t concern myself with the outside world. I checked in on email maybe once per day and didn’t read or see the news. Also, I don’t think ever in my life I’ve stayed up til 4 and 5 in the morning for 5 days in a row. Sleep deprivation finally caught up to me at the end of the week there and then when I got home, there wasn’t too much time for catching up either.

I think I finally caught up on at least sleep last night, getting a good long, uninterrupted snooze. I definitely feel better today because of it. This week’s going to be full of activities too and not much time for resting, but honestly, except for being overly tired (and therefore, slightly on edge), I don’t know if I prefer the slow times. I do miss having the mornings to myself though and feel as though I’m not able to fully wake up at all during the day because I’m at work. I must sound so spoiled. I don’t know how you people do it. I used to have a 9-5 job, but that was 4 years ago now and I forgot how it felt to do that as soon as I possibly could. I really don’t know how anything gets done if you have that whole day sucked up by everything else.