Day 10 Part 2 and Day 11

So to continue on what I was talking about in the last post...
Yesterday another incident happened with the same homesick kid that took me back to some of those feelings of doubt I had at the beginning of camp. This time, I responded incorrectly to this student's issue. Whereas my attempt to console and relate to him during his homesickness was admirable and well thought out, my response to his problem yesterday was definitely rash, abrupt, and poorly thought through.

Basically, he was complaining about the large group activity and called it stupid and dumb. I became really frustrated at him and almost immediately took him to see my boss, the head of the dorm. Normally, such a move is reserved for student issues that have no other possible solution. But I got so frustrated because I was afraid his bad attitude would make others in our group unhappy and spoil their activity, I immediately pulled him aside and took him to my boss.

He sorta just deflected the conversation once he started talking to him, and we sorta didn't do anything about it and hoped he would cheer up about the activity later. However, once activities had been going on for about 45 minutes, he approached my boss and explained that the real reason he didn't like the activity was because he thought two other kids in our group were rude and mean to him (something I did not pick up on at all the entire time).

He had a miserable time the entire evening activity because of my lack of patience and failure to respond sufficiently to his problems. Even the post-activity conversation, where I tried to get him to tell me how I could help him deal with his issues with others in our group, all this student did was shake is head and tell me he didn't really want to talk to me.

Talk about a break of trust. I felt responsible and knew I had screwed up big time. The only thing that helped was telling him that he could run a few games of Mafia during quiet hours. But the whole event broke a bit of the happy and confident sentiments I had the night before.

I guess that's all I have to say now. This Saturday has been slow and nice and calm, with the only hard part being staying awake. Enjoy your weekend, readers.

-Kevin