Resilience
Yesterday I briefly mentioned resilience as a character trait that grows at camp… let’s start the blog just reinforcing that point, for I think it is so important.
There are no perfect experiences, no perfect people, no perfect ANYTHINGS. We are constantly having to adjust to the “lack” of this world. The “bad” of this world will always drag on our emotions but we can overcome these feelings with a sense of perspective. No matter how many bad things we face, there are just as many good things for which we are thankful.
Resilience is a hallmark of most great experiences. It is always a character trait of a great leader. It is always a character trait of a joyful life. It shows perspective and is a mark of wisdom, but it is not the way we are naturally wired. I am sure all of you are aware of our tendency to have a “negative bias” in life. We can’t help but dwell on an insult or fixate on mistakes. Criticisms have a greater impact than compliments, and bad news frequently draws more attention than good.
The reason for this (as many of you know) is that negative events have a greater impact on our brains than positive ones. Psychologists refer to this as the negative bias (also called the negativity bias), and it can have a powerful effect on your behavior, your decisions, and even your relationships. Camp is a place where we replace our negative bias with a positive bias whenever we can.
It starts with waking up (clap your hands and say it’s going to be a great day) and continues at Breakfast Club (the joke today got a chuckle: “If I had 8 apples in one hand and 10 apples in another what would I have? Big Hands!”). We enjoy Morning Assembly (dancing to fun praise music and a quick devotion) AND ONLY THEN do we go to classes. A big chunk of time is spent on getting our attitudes right… and it works.
Camp is a place of enormous positive energy, a place marked by kindness and love, a place of smiles and meaningful conversations. In such a setting, we become more resilient. It is a wonderful reason to send your children to camp! I wish all children had this opportunity… it can change a life.
One place of growth has been our class schedule… let me give a couple of examples.
- Cooking is one of the classes that virtually all campers always love to take. It is amazing… but it takes place in an air-conditioned closed-in building and most classes have about 40 campers. In a COVID summer (yes, it is still a concern), we had to come up with a different plan… so we are offering cooking as a seminar class (you go with your cabin as a special event). This seminar allows the girls more time than a typical class (they are making 5 recipes!), but it isn’t a part of the girls’ daily schedules.
- Dog Camp was surprisingly popular this year… I mean EVERYONE signed up for dog camp (the Doodles are SO CUTE… and it is a fun class… it shouldn’t be a surprise). For the good of the puppies and the experience of the campers, we are making Dog Camp a class that you take for 1/2 the session and then change into another class (thus adding another great class to the long list of classes that make up a schedule). A good compromise, but a compromise indeed.
- High Adventure also got a big boost this year… so we did the same solution as Dog Camp. Half the camp will take High Adventure the first week and a half, and the other half will go next. These girls will just get to take a bonus class for the other half that they wouldn’t have been able to try otherwise!
These changes could have been a challenge for the girls (negative bias inclines us to grumble) but the girls have been amazing. They see the chance to take more classes as a good thing (which it is). They find themselves enjoying classes that they had not originally made time for. They go about their days with big smiles and are having a blast. They are stellar campers in every way!
A few details of the day…
MENU
- Breakfast: Pancakes and Sausage (and all the other stuff too)
- Lunch: Roast Beef Sandwiches
- Dinner: Pork Chops, Roasted Potatoes, Apple Sauce
WEATHER
- High of 78 degrees
- Good chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon (very common around here).
Might as well talk about lightning… for NC has the second-highest number of lightning strikes of any state in America (Florida is #1). We have a great warning system (Perry Weather) that lets us know if a storm is about to hit. We upgraded our hardware last year and found it to be very accurate. In addition… we have grounded the big trees around the lower campus. Thus, if lightning hits our trees (where lightning usually strikes) it is immediately routed through a thick cable into the earth and is not a problem. The girls are very good about getting out of the water and getting under shelter when a storm blows in. Most of the time, these storms last about 20 minutes and provide a great time to play games and get to know each other. They often end up being a favorite memory from the summer!
Thank you for checking in! I hope you are having a GREAT DAY!