What I wish was different
The working conditions are pretty brutal considering the pay. Counselors at Camp Lindenmere work very long hours. Most counselors work for eight weeks and get one day off a week, but you get no days off the first and last week of camp, which can mean up to 13 days of work in a row. If you're on duty, you work from when the kids wake up to when they go to bed (sometimes 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.) with maybe a one-hour break in the middle of the day. You sleep in the same room as your assigned group of kids and your co-counselors in a small cot with a very thin mattress. If one of your kids has a nightmare or wets the bed, they might wake you up to fix their problem, so even when you're sleeping, you're not really off duty. If you're not on duty, you usually work until a few hours after dinner.
You're usually on duty only two or three days a week, but I was once on duty for five nights in a row with almost no breaks during the day. When I went to camp leadership for help (putting a dozen kids to bed five nights in a row with little assistance takes a great toll on your mental health), they basically told me they couldn't do anything about it and I shouldn't mind working five nights in a row because of my love for my kids. Don't get me wrong — I adored my kids, but love alone does not a well-rested counselor make.
If you work here, you should be prepared to be sick for a long time and to lose your voice at least once. My kids didn't know what my real voice sounded like until around the third week of camp because I lost it on the first day. I had a cold for probably a month total.
The kitchen staff are great, but the food is not. It doesn't taste disgusting or anything; it's just really repetitive and really low quality because it's made in bulk. Most of the time, you eat in a giant dining hall with hundreds of people. They have group chants and play loud music at the end of every meal, which is really fun at first but can be really overstimulating for many kids and counselors. By the end of camp, I wore earplugs to every meal. When I asked, camp leadership refused to let me and my overstimulated kids eat outside to avoid the noise. They also wouldn't turn down the speakers.
