Nurse Red finished yet another amazing week with incredible college kids. I guess I’m going to write about this every camp because it is truly mind blowing.

So I had no idea when I signed up that Wisconsin has the biggest chapter in the country. They have three weeks of camp with about 80 campers each week. They also have at least forty counselors. The college has around thirty four thousand undergrads. So a good size pool to pull from as the camp needs that many to run smoothly.

Camp Kesem has strict ratios as well. I think it’s 2 counselors to every seven kids. They also strictly enforce the rule of three. This means no camper is alone with a counselor or no camper is alone with another camper. There must be at least one counselor per group of three. This is strictly enforced at all the camps I have been a nurse for. One camp that I have observed and would never volunteer for is terrible about keeping an eye on the kids and following the rule of three.

Urba and Brick were the camp coordinators. Both did an excellent job. I must say the organization at this camp was top notch. From pre made name tags to pre selected teams for color wars, to all the tie dye t-shirts being in bags and labeled with camper names before we even started the project. And if that wasn’t mind blowing, the shirts that we wore for check in needed to be washed to wear for check out. I went to put my name on the tag and it was already there. I told Urba today with her leadership skills, organization and personality she should be president. She informed me she’s too young and has no interest in politics. I forgot to mention she’s extremely smart as well.

I loved Minnow as she was the other nurse. She did adults for less than a year and then switched to pediatrics. I say bless her as dealing with parents of sick kids is extremely challenging. It just so happened her floor gets all the GI patients. So the kids that couldn’t poop this week were in great hands.

Because this chapter does three weeks many of the kids do all three weeks. This says so much about their hearts as it is an exhausting but rewarding week. They give up doing their paid job. I just can’t put this into words.

The camp advisors can make or break a camp. They are usually graduated but not always. Our advisors this camp were Sprout and Stiles. Ok Sprout still in college but I really thought he was 28 with the way he carried himself. Stiles is 28 and a high school math teacher. I would have loved to have him as a teacher even if his goal is to teach calculus. They were calm and very professional. If they were stressed over anything that happened they hid it well. If I’m lucky, I’ll work with them again in a Kesem of the future.

Mole Moral ~ If we treated each other every day the way we treat each other at camp the world would be a wonderful place. The socially awkward were just as included as the popular kids.