True Colors

OH MY GOSH! I got a bit off track. I completely forgot that I was going to blog about True Colors. I posted a blog about Kate instead of the true colors post. Shoooot. Well, anyway. I'll get back on track here...

The true colors test is a personality quiz. If you have any interest in taking it before I explain it, I've linked to a pdf of the quiz at the end of this little intro. Be careful not to scroll down to the second page of the pdf, the quiz is only the first page and results are further down. Preferable, print it out. It's easier to take on paper. Otherwise, type your answers into your phone or write down your answers somewhere. Come back when you figure out what your true colors are right here.

Okay, cool, you're back. What color are you? There are four colors; blue, orange, green, and gold. Once you take it, you can scroll down and read through the four personality types. You've probably read through the personalities by now. For a quick overview:

Blue people are very compassionate, caring, and in tune to emotions, both theirs and those of people around them.
Green people are very creative, independent spirits that think for themselves and like to question everything.
Gold people are organized, loyal, and value family and being helpful.
Orange people are spontaneous, competitive, and thrive in a spotlight.

That's a really quick overview, but there's a lot more that can be predicted by your true colors. How you thrive in a romantic relationship, a career, and what you value can all be predicted or laid out by your true color. The huge upside to this quiz is that it's scored mathematically for each category, so you can be a balance between a two colors, or even a complete tie between all four. That's very rare. I'm primarily blue, and then green is my secondary color. When I read the sheet about my "traits" based on my color, I was initially surprised, but then I started nodding my head. I realized how accurate a lot of the predictions for "blue" people were. A lot of the traits of blue people are things I am, or at least strive to be.

Learning your friends' colors can also be cool because it makes it easier to comfort them, or encourage them when they are facing a challenge. Based on their color, you can act as a better friend and try to cater what you say or do to get a more positive reaction from them. 

Now, if you try too hard, you're looking at Divergent-like factions from a dystopian society or something. I don't think you need to know everyone's color, and not everything lines up. Anyway, it's just another cool way to envision yourself and observe others, too. 

Happy quizzing!
Claire

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Kate

Kate is a wonderful and sweet person, and she has always been soft spoken but she is very funny when she speaks up. She’s a good leader and good with campers, but she’s also one kickass friend. I have had some good times over the last few months with her. Whenever she laughs at something, she makes people around her laugh, and the whole room seems to light up with happiness. That was a very sappy sentence, but I can’t describe it any other way. I’ve laughed so much with her to the point where I don’t remember what we were laughing at in the first place. She’s someone that you can purely laugh with and it’s the weirdest, most freeing thing ever. I think I’ll blog about laughter, just because it’s so bomb. Laughing is the chillest thing ever.

Anyway, Kate is just really good at making kids laugh, and listening to the little ones go off on tangents. She encourages all their ideas and thoughts, and they can ramble on forever once Kate asks them a few questions. It makes it easy for her to connect with anyone. She is an amazing listener.

(Here is a “Pro” tip from someone who’s not really a pro, but thinks this might be some good advice: listen to people. Treat every single person you meet like your equal, and value what every individual has to say. You can really learn valuable things from the most unexpected people.)

Another thing Kate is good at is being super organized. Her clothes were always neatly organized at camp in the cabin. She was good at keeping our leader in training group on task and gently reminding everyone of the big picture if and when we got frustrated.

There are a lot of other cool things about Kate I could say, but I think I’m going to stop here. At some point, I can not say more about these people. They really speak for themselves when you are hanging out with them. And after writing this many posts, it is starting to get tedious, but it is worth it to finish, too. And I will!

Anyway, stay awesome, Kate. You never fail to make me laugh, dear.

Claire

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Mac

Okay, this next post is about Mac! Mac is an awesome leader and always had his priorities right at camp. He truly focused on being a role model and a leader that campers could look up to, and he was careful that he acted fairly and included all campers in what he did. Mac is good at shifting between being a friend for little kids, and then maintaining an authoritative position. Sometimes, he’s surrounded by campers, playing a game, and other times, he is ushering everyone into the lodge for dinner and counting heads to make sure everyone makes it safely.

I wrote that last part before trying to tie Mac to my last post about impacts. That impacts thing was spur of the moment, but I think Mac is a strong example of someone that lives to make the small impacts, and affect one person at a time. He really tries to connect with every kid he can, whereas Luke makes a larger impact and knows everyone’s names. Both are amazing leaders, and have the capacity to fluctuate between impacting many and minute groups. But Mac takes pride in his focus on one task at a time, and I admire his ability to focus or care for, or set aside time for one child, or one person. He also expects the same in return from his peers, and asks politely if he has something to discuss with someone. He’s really communicative and very blue. OOOh! Now I have to take another break from writing about Leaders In Training and talk about the true colors test. Mac is very, very blue. And he’s a very good leader.

Stay awesome, Mac.

Claire

P.S. I’m gonna have to write about true colors next. It’s just a really cool quiz Camp Wapsie does, and I think you can take it online, too. I’ll look into it.

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Impacts

(This is something off-topic that I thought of while writing my last post, and I feel that it is relevant in my next post, too.)

I want to do something good with my life. I don't know what, but I want to make an impact. This post could sound very preachy, but I really just want to shed some light on the two impacts people can make. The big ones and the little ones. Both are vital to making the world a better place, and as my senior year gets closer, my future gets closer. College and careers get closer, and I have to decide what to do with my time on earth. It's a scary thing, and I don't really know yet what I want to do. I need to figure that out pretty soon. One way to start is consider the size of impact I want to make on society. Do I want to be in the New York Times, or the local Gazette for my work? Neither is better than the other, but I have to consider my options.

I'll put it in economic terms, as if donating to a charity is the impact being discussed.

Some people get rich. They act in big movies, gain hundreds of thousands of followers, donate millions of dollars to something they believe in. When you become a big, well-known figure, you have the ability to do something you love, be highly successful and valued for it, and you can have a huge influence on the millions that know who you are. When you have millions of dollars, you can donate some of it to a good cause you believe in and advocate for others to also contribute. That's a huge, huge, impact. That's the far end of the scale. We're talking Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Angelina Jolie. Millions of people are paying attention to what they do.

Some people focus on a small task to succeed at or work towards. Volunteering at the local soup kitchen is much more small scale. Raising money for a dance marathon at school is small scale. Collected cans of food for homeless shelters is a small scale example too. In this case, you participate in small scale positive forces because you have a smaller scale of funds. 

In both of these examples, contributing to charity isn't the only impact you have. You have a job, a daily career to follow. But the career you follow could also be an opportunity to make an impact and support yourself, too. The impact my teachers make is to help students. A larger scale version of my high school math teacher is a college professor that teaches hundreds more students and teaches at a higher level of learning.

Stay awesome,
Claire

P.S. I'm not sure what the point of this was. Just to make people think. Think about the impact you want to make and make it a positive one, kids. That is all. I think it ties to the next post because Mac acts on a small-scale.

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Luke

Luke is just awesome. He is outgoing and caring and will make a wonderful counselor or teacher or actor someday. He’s just one of those people that’s guaranteed to succeed in whatever he puts his mind to. At camp, he learned the names of most of the campers each week. There are over one hundred campers every week, and somehow he recognized and knew all their names by the end of each week. It was impressive how hard he worked when he wanted to accomplish something. When we had to serve meals to campers, he’d be saying hello to campers left and right, joking and guessing at their names and asking them how their day was going like he’d known them his whole life. He made everything a bit more fun than it seemed possible. During meals when we were serving tables, the two of us competed to get more dishes and pitchers of water out to tables. We’d walk past each other and point at which tables needed more bacon, extra butter, another platter of pancakes. It was some pretty creative teamwork. 

In addition to being a super hard-working person, Luke has a sort of magnetic personality that seemed to draw all the campers to him. He was loud and spoke his mind, and he can play a plethora of instruments and sing very well. That served him well at camp, where someone is always singing or performing something. Camp is a place to explore new skills and showcase your talents without the pressure of a critical audience. And Luke really believed in that. He helped an older camper learn to sing a pop song, and played the chords behind her on guitar, and he also spent tedious time helping a group of young campers learn the Cup Song rhythm, and helped them sing along to it. Another way he seemed to attract clusters of campers was with his attitude. Aside from being talented himself, he is outgoing and always willing to talk. One week, he met this really chatty little camper very early on in the week, and the two of them bonded and spent their mornings together talking about all the things they thought about but never said. They spent so much time together, and still months later, Luke talks about how much fun he had with just one camper. He had a huge impact on a kid that was self-conscious and normally wouldn’t have made many friends. Luke chatted with him a lot, and found a small, quieter group of boys that included him. It was a win-win, and Luke was a super bomb counselor for setting up a group of friends like that. Slightly off-topic, but he can also really sing. Actually, I said that earlier. He can sing. Besides the point. Luke is pretty awesome and I think he’ll be an amazing counselor someday. He leads by example and he’s competitive and determined. He’s versatile, but he could do so much good in the world, and I hope he follows a path where he can really make an impact.

Stay awesome, Luke.

Claire

P.S. My next post isn’t going to be about another LIT, I’m probably going to veer off and talk about small scale and large scale impacts. It’s important. I’ll come back to the other LITs later, though.

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Lauren

Today I’m writing about Lauren, I think. She’s energetic and hilarious, and she never let her emotions show unless they were positive ones. She is a tough, closed off person if she’s upset, but by the end of LIT even she was attached to Camp Wapsie and shed tears on the last night. During our time at camp, Lauren bonded really well with the counselors and camp staff, and sympathized with the hard work the counselors do. One week, after LIT was over for us, Lauren went back to visit the counselors and meet the LITs from session 3 at the end of their week. She found a counselor that was busy cleaning a shed of tools and stayed for an hour, helping clean out the shed and reorganize it, so the counselor could go home a little sooner and catch up on sleep. This meant the world for the counselor, who let her sign the wall inside the shed for her help.

Lauren also had the noise and energy level to rally a group of kids. One night, she and I had to occupy a group of two dozen older campers while the counselors cooked dinner and set up a group game. The counselors told us to take the kids on a hike for a few minutes and the game would be ready in a bit, and then the kids could eat dinner after the game. Lauren and I took the lead with hiking sticks, singing a loud song about going on a nature hike. We stopped abruptly many times and made up stories about the trees and tracks in the dirt, and then added the stories into the verses of the song. We had so much fun that by the time we got back from our little loop around camp, dinner was ready and the counselors were worried that we’d gotten lost. We ate dinner before playing the game.

Anyway, Lauren is just really good at engaging kids and making something arbitrary really fun. She’s full of energy and spirit and can put a positive spin on any situation.

Stay awesome, Lauren.

Claire

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Ryan

Writing about Ryan is going to be entertaining. He’s such a child at heart. There's something to be learned about people like Ryan. He was a little less mature when it came to leading campers and directing them in activities, but he's charismatic and goofy and makes kids laugh. He worked in the TP village with me during the last week, with the younger campers, and he had so much fun and led them really well. He’s not as assertive, but would push kids in the right direction positively. He is also known for his originality. He created a dance move called the “spin-whip,” similar to the “whip” which became popular over the summer. He did it as a joke when he whipped off of a bench while we were cooking dinner over a campfire, and we laughed and called it the spin-whip. He proceeded to do it all the time and he always landed awkwardly, sometimes toppling over. He did it anyway, because it always made us laugh. He’s also a very caring person, and was a shoulder to cry on for multiple campers and LITs. He’s a great listener, and will let you talk uninterrupted for a long time if there’s something on your mind. Ryan is a loyal, caring friend and leader. He’s the only LIT I knew before this summer because we’d met at camp the summer before, and quickly bonded. We were told we looked alike, and jokingly became twins, swapping sweatshirts and trading small jobs to confuse people despite looking completely different. He managed to make the most arbitrary tasks more fun, from dish-washing combined with dancing, and cooking dinner with singing and games. I hope he makes CIT because he’s funny, warm-hearted, and adds to the camp spirit by making everything a little less serious.

Stay awesome, Ryan.

Claire

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