Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-15-2015
Capstone Advisor
Rebecca Howard
Honors Reader
Eileen Schell
Capstone Major
Writing Program
Capstone College
Arts and Science
Audio/Visual Component
no
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
no
Honors Categories
Humanities
Subject Categories
Other Arts and Humanities
Abstract
After the school year ends, many students have the freedom to choose how they would like to spend their summer. Internships have become an increasingly popular option for students who seek to improve their resumes and boost their chances of landing a job out of college. This project, however, takes a look at one of the major alternatives to an internship, the summer camp counselor job, in order to demonstrate what it is exactly that camp counselors do and why this job has been critical to the success of so many individuals. Although this project does attempt to place value on the camp counselor position and persuade students to at least consider this as a viable summer option, the purpose of this project is not to bash the internship experience. Rather, through six first-person interview stories of individuals who either work or have worked at Camp Seneca Lake, this project concludes that both an internship and a camp counselor job are highly valuable, albeit in their own ways, and that students should consider both when thinking about summer goals and what they hope to accomplish. Though some of the first-person narratives place emphasis on the importance of the internship experience in terms of gaining credentials and landing a job, all of the stories clearly show the value of working at summer camp and how a camp counselor job can translate to so-called “real world” success. As such, this project hopes to complicate the often times far too simple decision for students to seek summer internships, and it encourages students to truly think about how the camp counselor job may benefit them in their search for future employment.
Recommended Citation
Jacobson, Alec Michael, "Why Summer Camp Matters: The Benefits of Working at Summer Camp on Future Employment" (2015). Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All. 1118.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/1118
