What is it about this Camp?: RYLA Reflections

I've felt quieter than usual on Smile Project social media lately. A result of back to back... to back to back... to back to back travel and, admittedly, a bit of poor planning on my part. But most recently, we've been quiet because I've been in Pennsylvania, my yearly pilgrimage home, but not home. Every summer since I moved to New York City (minus two covid years and one "terrible work timing" year), I've spent a life-changing June week working at camp. 

"Yeah, it's this camp that I spend a week at every June," I find myself repeating to the New York friends trying to make summer plans with me. But isn't it a bit more than that?

When I was newly 17 and an enthusiastic rising high school senior, I attended camp. RYLA. Rotary Youth Leadership Awards. It's filed under "leadership camp." There are speakers, team building projects, service initiatives, and evening activities. But isn't it a bit more than that?

So much of RYLA is magical because of its mystery. Despite both my older brothers having attended the camp, I went in knowing next to nothing. Without dispelling too many secrets, camp has another feature—group. Each camper is assigned a letter group and each letter group (typically 8 – 12 students) meets daily throughout the six-day affair to discuss. To bond. To let down their guard in a way they might not in their hometown environments.

I was a camper in Group J. I just wrapped up my eighth year as the counselor of Group E.

For the past nine years, I've also been honored to speak about The Smile Project at RYLA. I love nothing more than meeting a group of students who are the same age I was when I wrote my first "Happiness is" and talking about how that simple action changed every aspect of my life. 

The first year I went back to RYLA as a counselor-in-training, I was 22-years-old. I was working part-time for two nonprofits and working temp jobs in the evenings and on the weekends. I took the overnight bus from New York City to Pittsburgh. Taking the week off meant not getting paid, but it also meant I wouldn't have to cook my own meals for seven days. Balance.

Despite being more stable in every sense of the word 10 years later, I do have an appreciation for the logistical gymnastics it takes for me to leave New York City and spend a week in a college dorm without air conditioning. Thank goodness for my parents who keep twin sheets and a box fan in their closet, I think expressly for this purpose. 

Ten years after my counselor-in-training year, I see how much has changed. I'm grateful to have a job with paid time off. It's probably a good thing that that overnight bus no longer runs. This year, I flew Delta roundtrip. 

But it's still a lot to figure out. It's still a funny sort of "vacation." 

I love to travel. I love optimizing things. I love scheming my time off so I can explore widely and adventure deeply. Blocking 5 – 7 days each June is a funny commitment for someone who averages 3 out-of-state weddings a year and spends the remainder of her time reading travel articles.

And yet.

When I stare at my hours in December and think about my year ahead, I immediately subtract my RYLA days. "As long as I am realistically able to..." I hear myself repeating to friends. 

And why?

Maybe it is because—even after ten years in New York City—I still see myself in the 17-year-old from small town western Pennsylvania. I remember how it felt to sit in those seats and feel uncertain about the future. I try to tell them that even at 32, that never fully goes away.

Maybe it is because of the students themselves. They may see us as the counselors, the authority figure in the space, the adult in the room. But every single year, I find myself leaving with new viewpoints, new ideas, and new teachings from students now nearly half my age.

Maybe it is because of my co-counselors, an incredible group of kind, passionate, and unbelievably funny people who also put their whole worlds on hold for a week, leaving behind family, friends, pets, careers, school, and more to create a space so loving and so complete, where our campers have space to be both carefree kids and to be treated as the adults that they almost are.

Or maybe it is something else entirely. Something intangible. Some bit of RYLA magic that tells me that yes, in fact, I can go for a week straight on five hours of sleep and that, by the way, I'll be happy to do it. Or the magic that is someone telling you on the last day that they are so glad they didn't fake sick to leave early like they'd planned. Or the magic of seeing students push past their comfort zone, and the way it invites you to do so in your life as well. 

Or maybe it is remembering what it is to sit on the edge of adulthood. To be shaken from my Millennial world of responsibilities and expectations and ideas of how things should be. To be challenged with a new perspective or to learn new slang or to acknowledge that while I was once a camper, I was a camper in another lifetime. 

I was a camper with a flip phone that I put in the dorm desk on the first day and didn't touch again until the last day. I was a camper who had never been away from home for that long before. I was a camper who didn't grow up in the world that these students are growing up in. How can I not walk into every June an eager student of their knowledge? Of their lived experiences? Of their stories? 

It sometimes feels like a beautiful impracticality. Before campers arrived on Sunday, I couldn't sleep. I was worried about my unfinished Smile Project presentation. I was stressed about work. I was anxious about the tendon in my foot that took me out of running for a month and whether I was coming back strong (yet cautiously) enough for my August marathon. I was thinking about my life in New York and my home in PA and the relationships that span both cities. I was deeply uncomfortable on the dorm-issued bed.

Perhaps also, I was thinking about camp. Despite it being my ninth RYLA (if you count my camper year), there is still a bit of natural first-day jitters. "I hope I'm a good counselor." "I hope my group likes me." "I hope my Smile Project talk lands." "I hope I can be for someone what I needed at that age." "I hope I do right by them."

"I hope I do right by them." 

Nobody has it all figured out.

What is it about this camp? It's the "come as you are and let us love you anyway." It's knowing you are safe here. It's the "I'm really not so sure about this, but I'm going to keep putting myself out there." It's pushing through discomfort and trusting something great is on the other side. It's the "I'm so scared, and I don't know where to start." It's starting anyway. 

It's baby steps forward. It's baby steps back. It's knowing that sometimes you won't see the full picture until you're baby steps away. 

I went to RYLA in 2011. I was 17-years-old. Five months later, I posted my first "Happiness is." 

It is humbling and sacred to think of how we got here. It is not lost on me how much of my world and how much of the person I am today is shaped by a week I spent with 100+ strangers 15 years ago. I was leaning on my RYLA family then. Fifteen years later, I lean on them still. 

So give me the June stress. The pre-camp panic of feeling like I haven't done enough. The frantic packing at my parents before driving to staff training. The way I want to sleep the entire Saturday after but the way I never seem to, pushing off the inevitable crash until it hits me on an unsuspecting Thursday. Give me the uncomfortable dorm beds and the emotional hangover that is opening up. The late nights and early mornings. The showers that don't drain quite right and the cafeteria food, best served with imagination. 

Give me the tearful hugs. The saying goodbyes. The promises to stay in touch. Give me the exhaustion because through all of it, this is what Happiness is. 

So this is for the hope. For the one who stays. The one who believes. The one who dreams. This is for RYLA. Thank you for creating space for the ones who act. Who let themselves linger in the post-camp adrenaline crash for a day or so. And then who stand up, brush themselves off, and get back to joy.