Let Me Be Honest for a Second – June 18, 2009

I know I haven’t told you too much yet…but orientation was really fun. A blast actually. The goal of orientation was to get us 40 interns to know each other well enough that we’d feel comfortable working together for the rest of the summer. This involved tons of name games and activities and a little bit of alcohol. It was basically like summer camp for 21 year olds (plus me).

Now…I realize that throughout orientation we talked about these “students” that we were going to teach and these “teachers” that we were going to work with and these “dorm supervisors” that were going to be around…but they all really seemed like far off, distant creatures that had no concrete role in our trust falls or “cricket” games. And then yesterday two of the three showed up. The campus immediately switched tones. It was no longer just about US anymore. And suddenly there were kids that weren’t willing to go on adventures because they had “work to do.” And suddenly I was being told to put together an hour long lecture on the Hippocratic Oath. And like…that’s a lot of work.

So now the students – the reason for the program – are arriving tomorrow. A week ago, I was scared sh*tless about Orientation. I thought I wasn’t going to like my peer interns and that it was going to be this lame week of no-fun that I just had to get through before the real fun (in the form of high schoolers like Hank Schless) showed up. But now that we’ve assigned their rooms and have the name-tags on the doors and like…it’s obvious that they’re showing up tomorrow…I’m really upset. This all makes me want to be a freshman again or want to be in high school again or just want to be a camper again. Because this counselor/teacher/coach position is not as much fun as I thought it would be. And I might just be cranky because I haven’t gotten more than 6 hours of sleep a night on my sagging mattress. And it’s weird that I’m speaking in the present tense because I haven’t yet even taken on any of those roles, but I can just feel it…all summer I’m just going to be wanting my orientation week back.

AND just to top it all off, to perfectly match my mood at the moment, it has started to pour. As it will for the next three days. Boo.