Well this didn’t go to plan

It’s been a while, huh. The best part of ten months in fact, all the bohemian wishes of grandeur as I chronicled my adventures abroad seemed to have faded away. There are two reasons for this: neglecting all of my writings and the routine of daily life. For whatever reasons my writing habits went into a lull in late August. It’s most evident in my journal (though you’re not going to get to see that) where, for example, I wrote around 30 pages of text in my little black moleskine between July and thanksgiving in November, then since thanksgiving until now I’ve written somewhere around 175 pages – from 6 pages a month to 35 pages a month. Similarly with my bluepig blog, where there’s a vast gap between July and November, where I started writing regularly again. The routine of day-to-day life takes the edge away from the freshness of experience a year at a foreign university; eventually it stops feeling foreign altogether, something that was probably sped up because I’ve spent time over here before. At least now I’ve dragged myself back out of that marsh and am writing regularly again.

Plattsburgh has been a very mixed experience, some true highs and some painful lows. At first I was going out to parties regularly with a gang of other exchange students, but the police in a small town like this really don’t have anything better to do than to harass the students in their houses, which soured the whole thing. Add to that the real bane of my alcohol-related life: light beer. I can’t get drunk on light beer, I can’t even get tipsy on the stuff, I could drink 10 and still be stone cold sober, and because I’m not too keen on spirits and that’s all American students drink, I was pretty much stuck. So I gave it up, no more alcohol in the US, no more house parties.

I went home in December for Christmas to see my family and friends. Had a complete nightmare in getting home – all flights to Heathrow were cancelled which meant I was stranded in Montreal for three days. British Airways put me up in a hotel, so it wasn’t too rough, but my flight had to be rearranged, leading to me flying to both Miami and Paris, where I had a 9 hour layover before I could finally fly to Manchester and go home. It was exhausting, and made me pretty sick for around two weeks once I got home.

My blogging has been pretty limited in the past. I love the bluepig blog, which is now 2 years old and still going strong (I’ve got a few ideas that may very well pop up over the coming months, depending on where I end up) but it’s not necessarily my writing. In my mind I see bluepig as a photography blog with some minor travel writing included, seldom in detail, though since I’ve changed from writing directly onto the blog as the words come to me to writing on Microsoft word and editing/redrafting before I publish I feel as though my work has gotten better. My work’s gotten more professional in my academic writing too; I guess I’m finally growing up as a writer. Then last night I came across this:

It’s something I needed to see. So often I’ve felt like I should give up this whole blogging stuff due to feelings of inadequacy, even though I’ve seen the mantra of ‘the only way you get good at writing is by reading and writing a lot’ sometimes you don’t believe it. It takes a lot of willpower to say ‘even though I don’t like the way I write right now, if I carry on I’ll get better’ but it’s true, and that’s what I’m going to try and do from now on.

For a while now I’ve been considering starting up a new blog; a more personal blog where I write about what I’ve been up to, just day-to-day life wherever I’m living at the time. Life’s an adventure after all, in theory there’ll be plenty to write about if only I look for it. So stick the two together, a need to write more often and wanting to start a new blog, why not start using this one again? I’m not going to start properly for a couple of weeks; I’m entering the last days of my semester here so I’ve got a bunch of things to deal with as it is, like my final exams, packing up and leaving, and sorting out a flight home too, but it’s my hope that this blog can become a weekly-posting thing, with writing in long-form, rather than the short snippets I do on bluepig. Here’s to hoping.

Waking to the sound of bells

As I mentioned in my first post, I've worked at a summer camp in the past. In both 2008 and 2009 I worked as a counsellor at a stay-over private camp up in Maine, set up specifically for teenagers. I have to watch how I phrase things here, because whilst I don't have a single bad thing to say about my time there I'm not so sure whether they'd appreciate me spreading their name around on the blogosphere.

Camp life in Maine is essentially a self-contained world of its own. The kids can stay at camp for 2, 4, 6 or 8 weeks, and the staff were there for about 10 weeks in total. With the nearest decent-sized town with a supermarket about 20 miles away as the crow flies (it took roughly 45 minutes to get there) we are pretty much cut off from the outside world. The camp is big enough to develop a sense of community, and after a few weeks camp is its own little 'bubble', with your trips to the outside world, either with kids on day trips or on your days off, feeling a little alien. You lose track of what day it is (my camp didn't run to a Mon-Fri calendar) and your knowledge of current affairs fades the longer you're there. Not that you care; camp news takes priority over world news, and there's always some kind of story going on at camp, whether it be needless gossip, an issue with a camper, or what's for lunch.
Day-to-day events run to the bell. On top of the camp office is a large-ish bell, and it’s rung throughout the day. It rings to wake people up at 8am, again and 8:30 to tell everyone to go for breakfast, at 9:15 to start the first activity of the day, and every activity throughout the day afterwards. It also rings for lunch, dinner, and to let everyone know that the evening’s entertainment is about to start and it’s also used for fire and storm alarms, of course. In fact the only daily occurrence you won’t hear the bell ring for is to tell everyone it’s time to turn the lights out and go to sleep. Both the staff and the kids live their life at camp by the bell; you always know what you’re meant to be doing and where you’re meant to be, it’s a regimented affair but that’s not necessarily a bad thing when working with kids.
My field of expertise (or at least what I think I'm ok at) is music, and my work at camp revolved around this. I play a handful of stringed instruments, from bass guitar to banjo, and my main daytime role at camp was instrument tuition! Before I went to camp for the first time this sounded like the perfect job, teaching music all day long, passing on my knowledge and experiences to musical rookies and veterans alike. What I didn't realise is this rose-tinted view, whilst very much achievable, actually requires a good deal of prior preparation. I'd never taught properly before, and my teaching theory was going to be 'the open class'. My lessons were to be an open slate - I found out what my students wanted to learn and we worked on that, rather than me laying down the curriculum! And for a class of advanced students in a workshop scenario it would probably have worked a treat, but I wasn't teaching advanced guitarists. I was teaching intermediate guitarists and beginner bass players, kids who needed guidance before freedom, and I was completely stumped. Plan B didn't exist, I had no prior teaching experience, so it was very much a case of improvising as I went along, and doing my best to make sure my students learnt something. Teaching sounds like an enjoyable pursuit, but without any training or past experience of it, it's actually terrifying. Confidence, or at least giving the aura of confidence, is so important in teaching, and when you're bumbling through your lessons like I was you simply don't have said confidence. Come my second year it was completely different, of course. I was experienced at teaching groups of teenagers, confident in myself, and I had material to work on if my students weren't as adventurous as I'd anticipated.
My other role in the daytime was to teach bands. Teach isn’t really the right word for it, it’s more like coaching really. Campers who would like to play in a band are pooled into groups and given 3 weeks to rehearse for a live show, and as part of the music staff I’ll be given one or two of these bands to lead. I might simply be acting in the capacity of a manager, guiding them, helping organize things. Or I could be more of a tutor and coach, motivating and helping them learn their parts, gelling the group together. Sometimes you’d take on a role in the band itself; I’m a bass player first and foremost and as a rule of thumb we’re a rare breed these days, so I was often drafted in to bands who couldn’t find a camper willing to play bass. I don’t mind doing it at all, though it does feel sometimes that it’s not exactly what the kids really want.
In the evenings we would put shows on for the campers, called evening programs. With some good planning and teamwork we could put on pretty much anything, from a movie night, to a disco, to a live music night. My music roles at camp continue in these evening programs as I head one of the two teams of sound engineers, nicknamed the SWAT teams. It’s pretty simple work, just setting up a PA, monitoring it through the show, and putting it away again at the end of the night. It’s one of the few jobs in evening program that needs to be done pretty much every night, though some night’s work are bigger than others. For the SWAT team, the night on which the bands get to perform, called the live dance, is the biggest night of the summer. It’s our chance to show off, to demonstrate what we’ve been doing all summer, just how the theatre department has their stage performances; the art department has their arts show, etc. We do our best to make the show as big as possible; we bring out the biggest speaker rig, dynamic lighting gear, and large stages, so the campers have as much room to strut their stuff as possible. Weather permitting, we’ll even set the show up outside, which produces an atmosphere like no other on the night.
I’ll stop this one here before it gets a bit too long. In my next post I’ll write about the other side of summer camp – the time off.