Same Camp, Different Girl
The difference between being a student and a mentor at EF camp
The first time I arrived at Muhlenberg College, I had absolutely no idea what I was walking into. I was sixteen, had just arrived in America, and was about to spend ten days at EF camp with a bunch of other exchange students before heading off to our host families. And honestly? The first thing I remember is getting off the plane and seeing the mentors dancing the Cotton-Eyed Joe.
If that wasn’t a sign that the next ten days were going to be completely chaotic, I don’t know what was.
Camp was its own little universe. We had classes during the day where we learned about American culture, practiced our English and prepared for our exchange year, and then somehow had enough energy left for lip sync battles, volleyball games, pep rallies and approximately a million activities every evening. It was social, hectic and slightly insane, but in the best possible way. Most importantly, it felt safe.
At the time, I didn’t really understand why.
I was mostly busy being sixteen and living in my own little happy exchange-student bubble. I was excited about America, nervous about being away from my family and secretly wondering how on earth I was going to survive homesickness. But somewhere between the classes, activities, and making friends, something changed. I became more confident in my English, I started taking up more space. And during the pep rally, I remember finally feeling brave enough to stand in the front during the cheers.
That might sound like a small thing, but to me it wasn’t.
My mentor, "Travis", and my teacher, Sue, created a space where I felt comfortable enough to be myself. Camp gave me confidence I didn’t know I needed, and when those ten days ended, leaving felt a little like leaving a safe bubble.
So naturally, I wanted to come back.
A year later, I was standing on the other side.
I remember waiting for the application to come out around Christmas and being ridiculously excited when it finally did. I filled it out, decided that the best strategy was simply to be completely myself, and somehow, by what felt like a small miracle, I got the job.
During the preparation seminars, I was stressing. I had no idea what I was doing. I knew I wanted the experience to be as amazing as it had been for me, but I also had a completely different role now.
Then the students arrived, and somehow it felt natural.
Well… mostly.
As a student, I had never really thought about what the mentors were doing behind the scenes. I just assumed camp happened. I didn’t think about the mentors scouring the campus for the students who hadn’t shown up to class, making 300 beds, helping teachers, contributing to lessons, making up cheers, keeping track of hundreds of students or constantly trying to bring enough energy to keep the camp spirit alive.
As a mentor, I realized that camp doesn’t just happen.
Someone has to make the magic.
And suddenly, that someone was me.
Being a mentor was exhausting. We were basically working 24/7, getting very little sleep and constantly being “on.” There were students who pushed our limits or didn’t respect us, and there were moments when I felt guilty that I couldn’t give every single student as much individual attention as I wanted to. There was also the harder side of watching students struggle with homesickness when I knew exactly how that felt.
But somehow, all of that made the good moments even better.
I loved working with the most amazing mentor team. I love still being in touch with my co-mentors and having conversations months later about how our students were doing. And I especially loved those little moments that made me think, Oh my god, I remember this from when I was a student.
Like when students wanted pictures with me while I was dressed up in the mascot costume as a Grant Gator or Madison Eagle. Or when two of my students wrote me the sweetest thank-you letter. Or watching their faces when we finally revealed our nationalities after keeping them secret throughout camp, only for them to discover that I wasn’t Dutch after all — I was Norwegian.
But my favorite full-circle moment was, unsurprisingly, the pep rally.
As a student, the pep rally was where I found my confidence. As a mentor, I was suddenly the person helping create that experience. We made the cheers, practiced with our students, brought the energy, and somehow managed to win both pep rallies.
I was ridiculously proud.
Not just because we won, but because I could look at my students and see some of the same excitement and confidence I had felt a year before. I knew how much that moment could mean to them, even if they didn’t realize it yet.
And maybe that is the biggest difference between being a student and being a mentor.
As a student, you get to experience the magic.
As a mentor, you get to make it.
There were definitely moments when I missed being a student. One of the most common sentences between the mentors was, “Oh my god, I remember doing this as a student.” We would laugh about how easy everything had felt back then, completely unaware of how much work was happening around us.
I even remember being disappointed that some of my mentors hadn’t connected with me as much as I had hoped. Coming back as a mentor made me see that differently. It’s hard to give every student the attention they deserve when you are responsible for so many people and so many things at once. Every student is different, and even though my own experience helped me understand a lot of what they were feeling, I could never know exactly what each person needed.
But I could try.
I tried to remember what my mentors had done that made me feel seen. I tried to notice the students who were quieter. I tried to remember what it felt like to be sixteen, away from home, surrounded by hundreds of strangers and pretending you were totally fine.
And that is why I don’t think I could have been the mentor I was without first being the student I was.
Camp taught me how to take up space, how to be loud when I needed to be, how to connect with people and, most importantly, how much it can mean to simply make someone feel seen.
I loved camp as a mentor in a completely different way than I loved it as a student. As a student, camp gave me a safe bubble to grow inside. As a mentor, I got to help build that bubble for someone else.
And honestly, there is something pretty special about getting to return to a place that once changed you, only this time, realizing that you get to be part of the reason it changes someone else.
XOXO
Idahoho
Comments