My / Everyone’s Best Summer Job: Camp Counselor

The perks of earning without having a chance to spend

I was a camp counselor longer than most. From the time I was 15 until I was 22, I spent my summers working at an all-girls’ horseback riding resident camp in Wisconsin. Even though it’s been a long time since my final summer, a part of me will always live there. And even though it didn’t pay much, it was one of the best-paid jobs I’ve had.

I don’t mean just that the job was rewarding. I also had almost no time to spend money. For every two-week period, I had 24 hours off, plus one evening off. Between two-week sessions, I sometimes got an additional 24 hours off. On time off, sometimes groups of us would venture into Madison, the nearest city to the camp, and walk down State Street. Guys walked by wearing cologne, and after weeks spent primarily with girls and women, my head turned at the unfamiliar scent. Free entertainment! Also free? Luxurious showers on days off at other counselors’ parents’ houses.

Junior counselors may have started out making about $130/week, but we didn’t have to pay rent or buy food since we lived in cabins at the camp and ate meals with the campers. My brother helpfully pointed out that “the more I ate, the more I got paid.”

The manual labor of feeding horses hay bales and picking hooves made me ravenous. Some mornings when I was at the barn getting the horses ready, I could catch the smell of bacon wafting up the hill. The cooks made chocolate chip pancakes, French toast, breakfast sausages, and just about every other delicious food in existence. I still marvel that they managed to make such good food for over 70 people.

At night, the counselors gathered in a converted chicken coop that had been rechristened the Counselors’ Lounge, or CL. We ate snacks and talked. Sometimes we played games. There was one computer, which we shared in 15-minute time-slots, and one landline phone. When someone wanted to have a private conversation, she dragged the phone cord out the door, sat on the front steps, and whispered.

I kept coming back. I started teaching my own riding classes. I became one of the older counselors, which resulted in more responsibility and a raise every year. In college, I was hired to be the camp’s program director. I watched friends move on to other summer jobs and internships.

When I worked the entire summer, I was able to save about $1000-$3000, depending on the year. It wasn’t as much as my friends with waitressing jobs in Wisconsin’s tourist areas, but it felt like free money. Not because working at the camp wasn’t hard work, because it was, but because there was so much that came with it as a bonus: friendships that continue to this day, and skills that I still use, like calming down people who are scared and staying flexible when something doesn’t turn out as planned.

I still teach horseback riding, but I go home at the end of the day. It’s hard to lure me back out after a full day teaching. Now I need time to relax alone. But I remember my 15-year-old self, who could get up at 6:30 to get the horses ready, and still hang out in the CL until our midnight curfew. She did that without coffee. It seems superhuman now. I’m grateful for her hard work. Maybe it’s strange to refer to this past self in the third person, but it’s easy to imagine an alternate version of myself still living there, eating chocolate chip pancakes and saving for books and travel.

Sarah Von Bargen describes her financial advisor’s advice in a post on Yes and Yes: “You can work more. You can save more. Or you can want less.” I find it challenging to want less. My default is wanting more. But I find it helpful to to think of what else I want more of, in addition to money and stuff. I want to let work change me for the better and help me connect with people. And most of all, I want to give my future self choices and new skills like my past self gave me.

This article is part of our ‘Summer Series’ collection. Read more stories here.

Abigail Welhouse is the author of the poetry chapbooks Too Many Humans of New York (Bottlecap Press) and Bad Baby (Dancing Girl Press). Send her your camp photos on Twitter @welhouse.

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