Friday. T minus 15 hours till the last day of camp. The Saturday volunteer cancelled. My game plan was crumpled up and trashed. “Why hadn’t I thought of backup plan?” I asked myself, on the verge of pulling out my hair. I hadn’t taken into account all the variables and now I was receiving the repercussions. I had no idea becoming the Transportation Coordinator for a camp would be so stressful.…
Emerson has been grieving every day for two years and now tears are not able to fall from her eyes anymore. She decided to go talk to Brandon in prison. As Brandon walks up the glass, he is very hesitant to pick up the red phone. Ms. Emerson had a smile on her face which confused Brandon. “You took the greatest thing that happened to my life but now here with you to hear your side of the story,” she said. With tears coming down his eyes and face turning bright red. “I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me for the awful act I committed. My sister and I decided to run away from home because we was being treated really poor there. I knew that my sister was very hungry because she could not walk talk. We didn’t have any money so I decided to go look some food. As I was walking through your neighborhood and I notice that your door was open. So I walk in and went toward the fridge and I heard someone walking down the stair. I stood still because I did not know what to. He stared yelling and was going to call the police. I just couldn’t let him call the police because they was going to send us back to a foster house. I just could not let me sister suffer in another foster house. So I grabbed a knife and stab him in the chest. I ran away as fast as I could not knowing what I just did. I promise I did not mean to kill him. I am very sorry for what I did and I hope that I spend the rest of my life in prison so that can bring a smile to your face,” said Brandon.…
I am Ethan Ritz and a current 9th grader at Milken. For Service Learning this year, I was a Counselor in Training at Camp VBS for two weeks of the summer. A meaningful experience I had while being a CIT was playing with the kids in the pool. They loved the attention and the activities we played. I would give them a piggy back ride around the pool and if they wanted would throw them in the air. This always put a huge smile on their faces. One kid even said, “That was awesome!” when I threw him in the air. I loved making each kids day at camp even better.…
“Nine years ago I had a little brother who couldn’t walk”. I could see people’s faces get more serious. “He was a very happy kid who was determined. I was a little embarrassed to have him around me because I had to carry him everyday in a little cart. We would go out to the swamp near our house and I would try to teach him to walk. Finally, on his sixth birthday, we showed off our work to our parents. I couldn’t have been more proud and happy at the same time.” I started to tear up just a bit. “Time went by and I had this goal for him to be able to do all sorts of activities in a year. He sadly wasn’t able to do so but towards the final weeks before our deadline, I started to really push him. One day, it was raining and as we were running back to the house, I sped up. I was just trying to make him keep up with me. After a while I couldn’t see him. I went back the route I came and saw him lying their”. The class leaned in as I was about to say my last words with tears flooding my eyes. “He was…
Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility -- unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it -- that goes by the cult name of "Camp."…
Sweat trickled down my brow as I raised the sledgehammer above my head. As the loud crack of splintering rock rang through the air, I felt a sharp tinge of pain in my arms caused by my many hours of laborious work. Thoughts of pride, community, and accomplishment are spinning through my head. This is the culmination of my Boy Scout career. I thought back to the beginning of the week when this all started.…
It was in the muggy day in the middle of July and I was stuck outside watching a bunch of bratty kids run around in the woods playing tag and hide and seek. A few months earlier, I was applying for the Camp Counselor job at the M.E Lyons YMCA, which would be my first job. In the beginning of the summer, I had no idea that being a counselor would be extremely challenging, but very rewarding in the end.…
Drenched in sweat and trying to avoid touching anything made of metal, I stood in the back of the dump truck shoveling mulch into a wheelbarrow. The temperature outside was in the upper nineties reaching for triple digits. I could see heat waves coming off of the scorched ground, but I didn’t have time to pay attention to any of that. We had a task to finish and we would see to it no matter what obstacles mother nature or life in general would throw our way. This is the mentality that working in landscaping every summer throughout high school taught me.…
Something I wanted to do this summer was sleep more. If I would have slept more I would’ve been happier. I also wish I could have spent the night at my aunts and uncles house more. I wish I could’ve tanned more also. I wish I could’ve played, hiked and swam more.…
After introducing myself to all the girls, the 12 girls dragged me to their room with so much excitement. Walking into their room, I had to stop and take a deep breath. I knew the orphanage wouldn't have much, but I never imagined how little they really had. Their room looked like it belonged to an old abandoned house. The ceiling caved in; it smelled of an old dusty attic and had nothing in it but 12 beds, 3 dressers and a couple dirty stuffed animals just lying around. Some girls had pictures of when they were babies, some didn't have anything. I stood there silent. Tears balanced on my eyelids because at that moment, I realized that I have been so ungrateful for what I have, while other young, beautiful girls around the world have nothing but a bed and a stuffed animal. I think about all my clothes, shoes, friends and family that…
All of the seasons are great. Winter is really fun with Christmas and the snow. Fall is also great because of the leafs and football games. But I would have to say that my favorite season of all is summer. Summer is the best, it is baseball season I love to play baseball I have been playing baseball ever since I was a kid. Baseball is the my second favorite sport (First is football). Baseball is you just play the game and have fun. Even if you are losing it is still great to be out on a baseball field having fun with your friends. For example this year my freshman baseball was pretty good but not the best. There were some games we won and some games we lost. It's always fun to win. But even when you do lose you still have a great time out on a baseball field with your team.…
The puzzle pieces were starting to scatter apart when I got notified by my second grade teacher that I had to take that recuperation exam for math class. It wasn't a surprise, back then I wasn’t that efficient at math. I needed support, so I took tutoring in math courses for about a month and studied the whole content that I took for my second grade year. If I didn’t pass that test I knew I would be unsatisfied. That way I feel it’s worse than summer school. That's how it is in my country, which takes place in Honduras. I would say it’s tougher, based on the fact that there is major pressure. Besides, who would desire to repeat a school year over again? Definitely not me , I speculated.…
Carefully, with a shaky hand, I successfully inserted an insulin pump into my left thigh. I counted every carbohydrate I ate and timidly calculated my carbohydrate/insulin ratio. The liquid I was distributing throughout my body was not in fact insulin, but saline. Volunteering as a diet aide at Camp Carefree, a children’s summer camp for type one diabetics, gave me the opportunity to know what it felt like to step into these innocent children’s shoes.…
Summer to me is the season of fun; the season where kids get to be outside play all day long because the day is illuminated by the sun almost until eight at night. I got to play all day and it was even better when my cousins came over, I especially enjoyed this season when I was little. I have four other cousins that are about my age so you can imagine how chaotic it was with six kids from ages six to ten years old being together. As all kids we looked for adventure with our imagination, we invented games, and our parents taught us games they played when they were younger. One game that especially stood out was a game called “hoyitos” or “little holes”.…
It was 6 o’clock on a Friday. I couldn’t wait to see my new baby cousin. After what seemed like hours, he finally arrived. I called first to hold him and I was first to the door as they walked in. To my surprise, he was awake! I sat down and he was handed to me. I was quite nervous because I didn’t even know how to hold a newborn baby. “Which way do I hold him?” “What if he starts crying as soon as he gets in my arms?” I was instantly relieved when he looked up at me with his big blue eyes. It was almost as though he was telling me “Everything is going to be okay.” In all reality, I kind of expected to be prepared for watching kids. School is meant to educate students on important life skills,…