The Center for Servant Leadership will be hosting the annual Summer Camp Fair on Tuesday, Feb. 11 in Alumni Hall. The fair will feature representatives from almost 30 camps from a variety of states, including Montana, Colorado, Idaho, and of course, Minnesota.
Assistant Director for Vocation and Integrative Learning and Mentoring Program Coordinator Amy Pehrson is organizing the fair.
“Many of the camps are more like a typical church camp, but not all of them. So there is a wide variety in the types of camps and there is also a wide variety of types of positions that they are looking to fill, so from a typical camp counselor to maybe a nurse or a music program director, that type of thing,” Pehrson said.
Camp staff at the fair will be available to answer questions, provide applications, and schedule interviews. Students who attend the fair are welcome to bring a résumé and come prepared for an interview. However, the fair is also open to students who want more information about working at a camp this summer or in the future.
Sophomore Logan Boese has worked as a summer camp counselor for the past two years and hopes to move on to a leadership role or work in a related field this summer. Boese, who plans to work in some aspect of ministry upon graduation, has found that working in a camp setting provides valuable work experience.
“I find that it’s rewarding to see the impact from the beginning of the week to the end of the week. Depending on what type of camp you have, sometimes campers come in and they are super shy and don’t want to talk. Sometimes they come in and they’re a terror on your hands, and you don’t know what to do with them. But by the end of the week, seeing the bonds that you formed with them, seeing all the different ways that you reached out is great,” Boese said.
Although rewarding, Boese agreed that working at a summer camp is definitely an exhausting job. “It takes a toll, it’s super long. You’re on call 24 hours a day, you technically work about 23 hours a day. There are always different things going on, I mean you wear a lot of different hats; you’re a teacher, a counselor, a mentor, a lifeguard, just a whole bunch of different things, it encompasses so much,” Boese said.
Pehrson also addressed the monetary concerns that often come with a camp job. “I think that sometimes what people think about is that you don’t make a lot of money working at camp, but you actually can, by the time you think about the money that you have saved because you’re not commuting and you’re not needing to make lunches or you’re not needing to buy clothes for an office job or something,” Pehrson said.
Aside from church camps, the fair will also feature employment opportunities for day camps, camps for kids with disabilities, and adventure camps. Pehrson reiterated that the camps are looking for enthusiastic students with different interests.
“I have gotten a lot of feedback over the years that summer camps are looking for the type of people that are Gusties. Gusties are hard workers. Gusties are motivated, they follow through, they have all of the qualifications that these camps are looking for,” Pehrson said.
The fair seeks to take some of the work of researching and contacting summer camps out of the equation for notoriously busy Gustavus students.
“I think the fair is run especially well. All of the camps just come in and set up. It’s sort of like a college fair. The people are really welcoming; they love to chat,” Boese said.
The fair will be held in the Jackson Campus Center banquet rooms from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesday.
“It is a great opportunity for our students to think about the world of work, in terms of the summer, especially in places where you can really make your life count,” Pehrson said.