Personal Essay On Lifeguard

For most of my summer’s during college, I worked at a Girl Scout camp as a lifeguard. It was one of my favorite jobs I ever, but sometimes it was also difficult. During my second summer, I received feedback from the Head Lifeguard, Hank, that challenged me as a lifeguard and personally. Every day, I delivered waterfront rules to the campers that came down to swim. Providing the rules and ensuring the campers understood them made sure that the campers stayed safe and that my fellow lifeguards and I would not need to use our training to save them. But since the groups were composed of young girls from grade school to high school, there was always lots of background chatter while rules were being given. This frustrated me. So I took a harder line with groups of girls that were talking over me. Eventually, a group leader complained to Hank that I was being too harsh on the girls. Hank then came up to me later, and told me about the complaint. He told me to be kinder while
It upsetted me that the parent was blaming me for disciplining their children when the parents should have ensured that the children respected and listened to me. But I accepted Hank’s criticism and went back to the task that I was working on. At first, I stewed over it and became more upset with Hank for not telling the parent that the campers need to be more respectful to me while I was trying to give rules. I also complained to my sister and other coworkers about the parent and the campers for not respecting me. However, as I thought about it more, I realized that it was not my job to teach the children how to be respectful to people. It was to teach them the rules. So, I decided to work on my communication and work on teaching the children the rules in a way that was helpful, not harsh. That way they would respect me more and follow the rules because I was not raising my voice to be heard over them. I began working on my delivery and my