Undergraduate /
My Girl Scouts Camp Experince and Its Challenges [4]
I would appreciate it if you would read my essay for the common application and make sure that it is not to wordy, boring or long. The question is evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you. Thank you so very very much for your help.
Every summer since 2003, I have attended Girl Scouts Camp. I had lots of fun canoeing
in lakes, spelunking in caves, and singing camp songs. These weeks spent at camp were one of
the best parts of my year.
The summer following my sophomore year, I was particularly excited to attend camp
because I had become a Junior Counselor. For four weeks, I would help other girls to have the
same wonderful experiences that I had as a kid. My sophomore year had not been the most
spectacular academically, mainly on account of two classes. Geometry was the hardest math
class I had ever taken, and my Spanish II class was in a completely different language. But, it
would be okay because I was going camping.
Unfortunately, being a counselor was challenging, just like my geometry class. I had to
stay awake with homesick campers, console them, and try to get them to stop crying hysterically.
Yet, at the same time, as the youngest counselor, I also felt really immature myself. Finally, I
could not always understand my counseling colleagues, many of whom were from foreign
countries and spoke with accents. By the end of the third week, I had cried a thousand times.
Camp was becoming exactly what my sophomore year had been, a disaster.
While riding a bus back to camp for the last week, I noticed the trees alongside the
highway, which reminded me of a particular tree I had planted the prior week with another
counselor. This tree had been neglected in all the hustle and bustle of camp, and its wilted leaves
drooped sadly. I saw no reason to plant this tree since it was bound to die and politely pointed
this out to the other counselor. She looked at me and said, "Don't be so negative." I reflected on
her simple comment while on the bus. She was right. I had a negative attitude about everything,
not just that tree.
So, during that last week of camp, I decided to take this counselor's advice. Instead of
worrying about feeling immature, I was happy to be the youngest counselor at camp, using the
opportunity to receive lots of great advice from the older counselors like you shouldn't dye your
hair purple. Working a little harder to understand those foreign accents, I learned a lot of facts
about different countries. For example, in England, the purple Skittles are black currant flavored,
not grape as they are in the U.S. Perhaps though the most important thing I discovered was that I
could successfully convince many of my homesick campers to focus on camp's good aspects like
canoeing, caving, and singing camp songs, and perhaps help them to love it as much as I do.
This positive attitude was magical. I took it with me to me junior year. So, even though
Spanish III was also in a different language, I received an A- in the class, and although Pre-
Calculus sounded like Geometry's evil twin, I kept a positive outlook and did well in that class
as well. In fact, all of my grades improved in my junior year, and I achieved an overall 4.0 grade
point average. Nowadays, whenever life presents me with a tough situation, I think of camp and I
"stay on the sunny side, always on the sunny side" (camp song).
