Okay, so I haven't been so responsible about posting very frequently. Sorry about that, esp. since I've recently found out that I do have more than one reader. I'll try, really.
I've been thinking a lot about responsibility lately because there are a lot of things changing in my life that are requiring more of it from me and others close to me. One major thing that has happened recently was the marriage of my brother and his now wife Courtney. The nice, informal wedding took place on a very sunny 5th of July. Its still not sunk in yet, partly because my brother is so far away, training for the Marines in Pensacola, FL. and partly because I don't feel old enough to have a married brother yet. Weird.
Living in a house has been more responsibility for me as well. Living in an apartment in college for two years was a big help preparing me for all the cleaning, dishes, laundry, furnature arranging, etc, but having a yard and many more rooms that needed some help has added on. Mike and I have managed to clean up quite a bit, ripping up rugs, doily and other old lady paraphernalia removal and even painting in one room. This past weekend we spent some time working on the outside of the house, "the jungle" as the neighbors call it. There's still a lot to do, but we're making progress. In a way, its good practice having to do this stuff. It will prepare us for when we actually own a house, but without having to worry too much about the major issues. (IE- if the roof needs work here, thats the landlord's responsibility).
My job this summer has also been a big step up in the level of responsibility I have. I'm working at a summer camp (which shall remain unnamed- I signed a contract saying I woundn't) as the director in charge of the 10-12 yrd old program. This has been way different than any camp job that I've worked in the past. Instead of being in charge of 30 or so campers and spending the day with them, I'm spending snippets of a day amongst 8 groups of about 11 campers, with a mixture of meetings, paperwork, feilding phone calls from parents, and other miscillanious errands mixed in. For the first two weeks at least, I felt like I was student teaching again. I get to work about 20 min early, work 7 hours, then 2 hours extra for kids who need to stay later at camp, and then I would come home to do 2 more hours of paper work! This session has proved to be a little less intensive, mostly because I'm just reusing alot of what I did last time and just changing the names and numbers. Don't get me wrong, I do really enjoy being there and I know its going to help me grow professionally and look great on my resume. I think it has pretty much secured in my mind that I don't want to be an administrator later in life, I'd miss the interaction with the kids too much. Not to mention that kids are much easier to discipline than staff. I think that I'll be able to increase the time I spend with the kids as the summer goes on and I get better at oraganizing and deligating paper work and errands. Just as long as I don't have any more nights like last night- I woke Mike up at least once or twice "looking for the kids".
