Growing Up Wildwood: Interview with 2016 Junior Counselors

We are continually amazed by the dedication of the Wildwood community. Many of our counselors and staff begin as campers in their youth, continue on to the Leaders-in-Training program as teens, graduate to Junior Counselors, and many even go on to become full-fledged counselors and staff.

Last summer, we interviewed the 2016 Junior Counselors to find out what they had to say about the Wildwood experience and what keeps them coming back, year after year. Below, we hear from 17-year-old JC’s Zach (9th year at Wildwood), Julianna (8th year), Izzy (4th year), Isaac (9th year), and Sophia (7th year), as well as counselor Nick (6th year).

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What brings you back to Wildwood every year?

JULIANNA: For me, it’s the friends I’ve made here, the activities that they have, the beautiful setting, the staff, it’s an all-around excellent experience. It’s also very sentimental for me, because I’ve been coming here since I was very young, so all of that makes it like a tradition.

IZZY: Yeah, it does feel like a tradition to come back here every year.

SOPHIA:  I went to one camp before this and I didn’t get to choose what I did on a daily basis, and that’s part of the reason why Wildwood is s uch a great camp because you do have all of this choice, where you get to basically build your whole day. And yeah, it’s a structured schedule, but you get to choose everything that you do on a day-to-day basis. If you want to do sailing, you can do sailing, and if you want to do something completely different in the afternoon then you can do that, too.

What do you love about Wildwood?

ALL: It’s FUN!

What are a few of your favorite traditions at Wildwood?

IZZY: I like a lot of the campfire stuff, like songs we sing—those feel like traditions to me.

ISAAC: There are kind of inside jokes that carry over a lot of the time, so that’s fun.

SOPHIA: [A lot of the inside jokes] are kind of created in a specific context, and sometimes when you lose that context of camp, they don’t really translate outside of this environment.

JULIANNA: I really like the tradition of the evening programs, because I remember when I was in Carson [9–10-year-old girls], Predator-Prey was like the coolest thing I had ever done. It’s this game kind of like Tag and Manhunt, and I thought that was the best thing. And it’s kind of cool for me now to see the younger kids having as much fun as I did and being able to help them have that experience for the first time, so that’s really cool for me to be older now and see that.

SOPHIA: My favorite EP [Evening Program] was Heffalump Hunt, which is where all the LITs and counselors dress up in wacky costumes and they have a weird activity that you have to do in order to get their signature and you basically try to collect all of their signatures. When you were a camper, when you were in Carson and Fossey and Thoreau and, you know, the younger units, it was fun to just do something weird and wacky and as you get older and become an LIT, you have to take on that tradition of being this weird, wacky, fun character…and taking on that responsibility is really great.

NICK: The beauty of camp traditions here is that they’re always malleable, they’re always changing. Like, Heffalump Hunt is going to be different every single year, every single time the kids play it—it’s going to be different counselors doing different things, having different crazy characters. The skits in the dining hall, advertising the activities for the day every morning, those are going to be totally different every day. I mean, you’re going to have archery every single day, but the skit will be different, the counselors bring a different energy to it.

ZACH: Speaking of archery, does anyone remember Donny?

IZZY: Yeah, how could you forget?

ZACH: Well, I had him for archery, he was the archery instructor and I always did it for DG [Discovery Groups] when I was in Abbey [13–14-year-old boys], and he always used to do the same series of skits, but there was a different story behind it.

SOPHIA: You don’t really think of the skits in the dining hall so much as a camp tradition, but it really is, and if somebody were just to go up and read off, “Today we’re going to have Archery and Sailing and Tie-Dye”…it really adds a whole level of character, and it sort of forces you to be a little more eccentric than you might be normally, which is really fun.

NICK: That’s sort of the great thing—the value—of, I think, camp in general, but I definitely see it a lot here at Wildwood, of the constant air of wackiness and goofiness and kind of improvised stuff. It really encourages kids to be whoever they want to be, because they’re in an environment here that’s distinct from their home environment where they’ve likely been going to the same school with the same people in the same town—I mean, depending on the kid—for many years in a row and it gets to a point when you live life like that, that how you define yourself is somewhat how others define you. And this is what I tell kids, the older kids every time, when they’re coming here and they’re having a hard time getting into things, “This is your chance to be the crazy, wacky person or whatever that you’d like to be but you don’t think you are. Nobody is going to judge you here and nobody’s going to hold you to it, because, worst case scenario, you embarrass yourself and you leave in a week-and-a-half and nobody remembers it.” So, you can really be who you want to be here.

Any other stories you want to share?

SOPHIA: One time, I was doing the zip line, which is the highest part of the ropes course so it can be kind of stressful if you don’t like heights that much. This kid was up there and he was scared, which is understandable, so we were trying to cheer him up and make him laugh. One of the Abbey boys that was with us—I was in Fossey [11–12-year-old girls] at the time—he told this story about when he accidentally dropped something down the composting toilet and it was something important, too, like a book or something, and everyone was laughing and the kid [on the zipline] just jumped off. I remember that story being so funny and it really broke the tension. It was great.

What’s the most rewarding thing about being a JC?

IZZY: Getting to joke with the kids and things.

ISAAC: Yeah, it’s fun when everything’s going well and the kids are having fun and the activity’s going well.

JULIANNA: I think when the kids are excited to see you, that’s really rewarding for me. And being able to see my own experience in the younger girls.

SOPHIA: Honestly, it’s so much fun just talking with these 11- and 12-year-old girls who had experienced some of the same things that I did but they’re just younger, because I was in Fossey when I was a camper, so just being able to share stuff about your experience. And also seeing campers change from when they come in, from really dependent to more independent and figuring things out on their own, stuff like that.