Internship

For my internship, I decided to be a camp counselor for the Bay Area Disc Association's summer camp. During my internship, I worked a total of 60 hours, all of which can be seen in the log below.

For the purpose of avoiding repetition, I will only include one week's worth of my internship, seeing that both weeks were similar in content and structure.

Hours Log

6-22-15

6-23-15

6-24-15

6-25-15

6-26-15

6-30-15

6-29-15

7-01-15

7-02-15

7-03-15

6-22

Today was the first day of camp, and I have to admit that I may have been as nervous as some of the campers. Since it was the first day, I arrived early to the fields and met with the other counselors to set ground rules for the week. As counselors, we were urged to encourage "spirit of the game" at all times during the camp, which is a fundamental concept of Ultimate that calls for the respect and hard work from everybody participating. When the campers arrived, we did introductions and informed them about the general structure of the camp for the week. We explained that the camp was meant to help the campers build their own skills, and on the last day, there would be a "tournament day" that would test their improvement over the last week. And with that, for basically the rest of the day, we conducted drills for the campers to serve as a benchmark showing their skills on the first day of camp.

6-23

Today we introduced another feature of the camp, which is a series of games that will be played in the following days leading up to the big "tournament day" on Friday. Tuesday (today) was going to be "Kan Jam", Wednesday will be "Double Disc Court", and Thursday will be "Disc Golf". But before we got to playing our game for the day, we started with quite the unorthodox warm- up activity: Banana Tag. All of the campers were divided up into two groups and one group of counselors took one to an area of the field while the other counselors took theirs to another. After that, we took a break for snacks and later, started to running drills again. We broke up the kids into smaller groups and I had to tell each of the rotating groups about what to do in each drill. For the remainder of the day, we played our designated game of the day, "Kan Jam", which is a 2v2 game with the ultimate purpose of throwing a disc into one of the cans.

6-24

Before running any drills, I led all of the campers through warm- ups, involving a quick jog and stretching. After that, we all played a game called "Sardines" that is basically tag, but it is just played with a disc. Even after two activities, the campers were pretty fatigued considering how much time they have already spent outside in the sun. This is usually the point in time when the kids become difficult and refuse to do strenuous activities. Instead of doing any more drills, the counselors decided to let the campers play games like "Assassin" and "ninja" to let them rest in preparation for the remaining activities of the day. After playing games, we all ate lunch and then started our "game of the day", Double Disc Court which I can only best describe as tennis with two discs. I had not heard of this game before today, but gladly, I learned it fast enough to act as a referee for rest of the day.

6-25

Today started basically the same as the previous three days of camp. Staring with warm-ups, we moved into tag then various drill rotations and quick scrimmages. After snacks, we played a popular game among the campers called "Galaxy Wars". Galaxy Wars is a game with four teams of about seven or eight people and each team's objective is to protect their own "galaxy" (2 cones) while also trying to attack their opponent's cones. Since basically all of the campers loved the game, we must have played it for about one and a half hours. And of course we did a campers versus counselors game which ultimately ended in our own embarrassment since, unsurprisingly, all four of the camper teams teamed up and immediately eliminated us. As for the game of the day, I helped assemble the disc golf course that occupied the whole field and led a small group of campers around it, keeping score.

6-26

Today was the big tournament day when everything the campers learned would be put to the test all day. The teams were decided by the counselors based on each of the camper's skill level and each team was assigned to one counselor as a coach of sorts. For the whole day, my team was running and playing hard and of course, just like on Wednesday, tensions rose because of fatigue and soreness. My job during this time was to remind every team member of the spirit of the game, and how we need to respect each other and our opponents at all times. As the final day of camp came to an end, all of the counselors came together to pick a couple of the campers that we thought truly exemplified this idea of spirit of the game during the whole week. We ended the camp by celebrating these players and giving everyone some form of gift for their hard work.

Reflection

During this internship with Bay Area Disc Association, some of my daily tasks included leading certain activities such as warm- ups, games, and scrimmages, and also coaching, refereeing, and even conflict resolution at some point during the two weeks I was interning there. Some of the specific skills that were required to carry out these tasks were the same ones from ACLC’s list of graduation requirements. Certain qualities such as self- management were used to keep myself on track to completing my job, speaking, listening, and problem solving for coaching, conflict resolution and speaking to large groups and the most important personal quality, the ability to teach others new skills. This quality was by far the most crucial one of them all because without it, I would have not been able to establish myself as a leader to the campers.

As I mentioned previously in this reflection and also in my daily journal entries, one of the most frequent obstacles I came across during this internship was when a camper, whether they were frustrated with themselves, a teammate, or they were simply just tired and sore, failed to be cooperative as I was trying to lead them. Usually when these problems occurred, I used the listening skills I listed above to assess the situation and then I told them my opinion and encouragement to help them feel better.

This internship was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I say this because I thought when I had a title such as “counselor”, that automatically meant that the campers would respect me as a leader. I was very wrong making this assumption because I later found out that in order to be respected by you peers, you have to prove yourself in a different way than just having a title saying that you are in a leadership position. So from the start of my internship, I strived to show my knowledge about Ultimate in order to better establish myself as a leader. In addition to redefining my perception of a leader, I also learned about adapting to adversities especially when solving problems on the field.

Lastly, I feel very grateful that I had the opportunity to do this internship because I have learned more than I could ever imagine about the concept of leadership.