Week 6

This week consisted of cranking building preparation, community outreach, and program finalization into high gear. On Monday, our youth worker orientation was scheduled. I was surprised to see that the morning shift's compliment of workers arrived on time, considering the lack of forewarning we gave them. The majority of the counselors are in the 16-18 age range, with a few of them having already graduated high school. Two of them are going to the same college in the fall, one of these having graduated second in his class and another is working towards enlisting in the navy. I say all of that to say this: I have disappointed by their maturity levels so far. The counselors spent most of this week being rude, attempting to find the laziest and most disruptive way to disobey my directives as their supervisor, and making crude remarks about Maura and myself behind our backs.

These teens are only working four hour shifts, yet they seem to find these unbearable and work very hard to make things move as slowly as possible while attempting to avoid even the simplest of tasks. The aforementioned salutatorian has openly explained his own irritating behavior, stating that "when we're in school we're in school; when we're in the hood we're in the hood." This duplicitous nature seems to be at the root of a few of the issues I have experienced thus far with the counselors, who appear to believe their familiarity with the environment surrounding AUMS grants them free reign to do as they please when working for me. I will not waste time detailing the various problems that have arisen, but I have spoken to Elaina my supervisor about them after several attempts to get through to the workers themselves. I can only hope the counselors do not act this way next week when the actual camp starts and we are hosting children.

On the technical front, this week we finished cleaning the originally disgusting secondary program room, and painted it a light red afterwards to high its blemishes. The room is now furnished and rather inviting to the whims of young boys and girls.I spent a few hours swinging a sledgehammer into rotten wooden tables in the hopes of making our backyard into a feasible play area for the campers, but it appears as though we will not be receiving necessary mulch to complete the process, rendering this work useless.