1. Joshua Dirks
Cornerstone
Mrs. Heimann
Narrative Essay
Last summer while being a camp counselor at Camp Okoboji, I was sitting by the front
door to the cabin enjoying the beautiful day, waiting for the kids to show up. The sun was
shining, there was a slight breeze from the lake, and life was peaceful. That was all about to
change in an instant.
The kids started to slowly arrive, and then it was like someone had let out a bunch of
chickens. Cars where parking around the cabins and kids were going every direction under the
sun as parents moved them in to their temporary homes for the week. As parents would leave
they all seemed to have this sarcastic sympathy for the counselors as they told us “good luck” or
“have fun with them” almost like a forewarning of what we were getting ourselves into.
After all the kids had moved in my co-counselor and I were trying to figure out different
ways we could control the 19 children we were in charge of to make sure everyone had a good
time. As I started to get to know the kids I would be spending the next week mentoring and
sharing a cabin with I found out one of the kids in my cabin was a boy scout and had recently
gone to summer camp for that. I had the feeling this kid was going to give me trouble during the
week by the way he held himself and the way that he interacted with the other campers. I decided
I better do something before he started to get comfortable with the way he was acting. So I
started talking to him about boy scouts, the camp he had gone to, and how I was also a boy scout.
As soon as I told him I was a Boy Scout and that I was going to be holding him to the standards

2. of the Scout Law, his eyes seemed to get big and he seemed to have found a new attitude that he
was going to have throughout the week. He told me later that he didn’t realize I was also a Boy
Scout and was scared when he found out that I knew the Scout Law and was going to hold him to
it.
Throughout the course of the week I had a few problems with the kid. He was doing
things he wasn’t supposed to, like using his size to persuade other kids to do something, and he
also had a couple items he wasn’t supposed to. Instead of just leaving the items in his bag so that
I wouldn’t have to take them, he decided to pull them out and use them even though they weren’t
necessary. Every time we had a problem I would ask him if he was following the Scout Law and
ask him what point he thought he wasn’t. The repetition of asking him each time I caught him
which point he wasn’t following, caused him to rethink doing things that were questionable by
the middle of the week.
The second half of the week was much easier for me and the camper because we both
had more time to hang out with other people, and I could focus more on helping kids with home
sickness rather than one kid not doing what he was supposed to do. I also was able to make the
rest of the week more enjoyable for the rest of the campers which a loud me to leave an
impression on them that will hopefully shape them to be better people later in life.
By sharing part of my life with a camper and connecting with him. I was able to help
make camp enjoyable for a whole cabin of boys while also shaping them to be better people. I
was also able to prove to a child that he never knows when he’ll come across someone who
while hold him to a higher standard than everyone else just because he is involved in Boy Scouts
and someone knows the Scout Law or the standards that Scouts are held up to within their own

3. troops and scout camps that they attend throughout their scouting career’s. All because of the
uniform that they put on and the pride and integrity that comes along with it.