During my STEP Signature Project, I spent two months at Rockbridge, a Young Life camp. There I helped set up and run all of the events for the campers that come in every week. I worked on the waterfront and the ropes course of the camp.

While I was at camp my understanding of myself drastically changed. I think one of the coolest things that happened while I was there was that I learned a lot about myself. I got to learn more about the good and the not so good parts of myself. I learned that I thrive in an environment that works on organizing and running. However, I also learned that a negative part of myself is that I often serve with a very selfish mindset, wondering that if I do something for someone that they will do something in return for me. While I learned this about myself, while serving, because I was a volunteer, I got to correct this is my mind and have become someone who serves selflessly.

While serving at camp I met so many different people. All of these people were completely different from me, grew up in different places than me, go to different schools than me, and each of them taught me a lot of about myself. While on summer staff, I served with around 30-40 other people each month. Because I was there for two sessions, I had two different groups of people that I had the privilege of serving alongside. I got to learn so much from each of these people because they were all so different from me. This interaction with them also put me extremely out of my comfort zone because I did not know anybody coming into the experience. This led to a lot of growth for me in my boldness and putting myself out there to other people, and working towards bettering myself through diversity.

I also got to interact with many different campers throughout my time at camp. There was a different group of campers at camp every week. Because I was at camp for 8 weeks, I was privileged with getting to meet hundreds of new people every week and learn from them. These were all high school kids, and while they were all younger than me, I learned a lot from them. Each of these kids comes from a different background, whether that be school, race, or location, but I think that diversity is what allowed me to grow so much. I got to learn about what it is like for these kids and get to step into their lives. In our society today, human interaction and humans caring about one another and their stories is something that is not as highly valued and I got to counter that and step into people’s lives, in their mess and all and love them through it.

In the final two weeks that I was at camp, we got to serve Young Life’s Capernaum ministry. This is their ministry for kids with special needs. Every single week that I got to serve campers were incredible. However, there was something extremely special about serving these kids. In our society, people that have special needs are often overlooked and not valued as people who can truly contribute to society. Getting to serve these kids and help play a small role in making them feel loved, welcome and wanted was the most valuable thing. I learned so much about just being myself and being comfortable with that through the interactions that I got to have with these kids. All of the people that I got to meet and interact with while were the highlights of my trip and were what taught me the most. I think that I learned through this the power of people. The bond that we all have through being human beings is so important, and truly has a power to bring people together, and that is something I learned through this project that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Our society is in one of the hardest places that it has ever been in before right now. With the age that I am at, I am having to enter adulthood in a tough time, where a lot of societal problems are being presented and left for me and my generation to deal with. What I learned through simply interacting with people at camp that I had never met and entering into their life is an invaluable skill. Today, I think the idea of simply getting to know people and truly entering into their life is rare. By simply getting to know someone, instead of being a stranger to you that you can almost dehumanize them, they become a human being with a name and feeling, just like I have. This is one of the most important factors in making peace. With my major being international relations and diplomacy, this is what I am most passionate about. A lot of the issues that exist within our world, are instances in which people dehumanize other people. Learning how to do something that is taught in peace making myself, gives me experience in the future to be able to show it to others in my profession. Everyone in the world should use these skills, which is why it was so invaluable for me to learn it in through this STEP Signature Project.