By Sam Sheran
My first year at Sci-Tech, I almost didn’t want to come back. I was hopelessly homesick—I didn’t get along with my roommate, I didn’t like the summer heat, and I just really missed my mom. I spent my two weeks crying and talking to my counselors. And when I wasn’t crying? I was relatively quiet. I spent a lot of my time reading, I followed every rule exactly as it was laid out, I didn’t argue when adults told me to do things, and I preferred to listen to my friends goof off than actually join them. I almost didn’t come back for a second summer.
Luckily, I decided that two weeks wasn’t enough to decide if I actually liked a place or not, so I opted to come back to camp the following summer. That second summer was the year I really fell in love with camp—with Boker Big Bang every morning, with evening ritual every night, with workshops and chugim and, most of all, the people. That was the summer I became really good friends with people who are still here, and who I’m still close to, to this day. It was the year that I first had the capacity to enjoy what rapidly became my favorite part of the day: Shira.
Shira, or song session, was the first time I had ever seen people being goofy and loud in public and having it be a good thing. To 12-year-old Sam, that was life-changing. It gave me an outlet for the energy and the silliness that I had cooped up inside of me, pushed underneath a heavy layer of wanting to never be perceived by anyone ever. But at Shira, 7th grader Sam and their friends smushed as close to the stage as possible so that they could be as goofy and as over-the-top as they could possibly be.
My 8th grade summer, two years after my first year, was when the goofiness began to become something that wasn’t just confined to song session. I began, on my hall, to get louder. I started actually speaking to people, including my counselors, and actually participating in jokes and games that my hallmates were playing. But the idea of doing that outside of shira, and outside of the privacy of Sagan 1, was something not even considered. I kept my distance from anyone who wasn’t on my hall—even the other upper camp “girl’s” halls, in Sagan, were an elusive beast that I could never even dream of becoming friendly with, much less being my goofy self with.
9th grade Sam was the one who started branching out even more. If my friends made friends on different halls, I would talk to them. I’d go along with goofy plots, come up with silliness of my own. 9th grade is also when my eyes started turning towards the actual leaders of Jewish ritual moments. How amazing it was that they could be up there, in front of camp, being silly and having fun. How wild it was that they were brave enough to have that be something they were even willing to do.
How I wished I could do it too, even if I knew—I just knew— that I’d never be brave enough.
And then my time as a camper ended with Covid summer, and I learned something new about myself: I could be a leader within my age group. During the pandemic, I pushed my cohort of friends—people who would have been 2020’s 10th grade class—to stay in touch. We had (and still have) a group chat I created that has rotating Spork-related names, and for almost two full years had zoom calls every Saturday night where we would talk and play games for hours. For most of that time, I made sure the zooms happened.
Three years “post”-pandemic and with machon summer and nearly two years of being staff under my belt, I think that the much smaller versions of myself would fall over if they saw me. This summer, I’ve spent my time as a songleader, something I swore I would never be brave enough for. I am goofy essentially all day every day, both with my own hall campers, with the campers in the songleading chug that I now run, with the entire camp at Boker Big Bang and shira and services, with my coworkers in both Sagan and in the Jewish Life office, and with my friends.
I wish that I could cradle the face of the 11-year-old Sam who sat in the Franklin 2 common room sobbing every night and turn their eyes into the future. I want to show them the countdown to camp that I check religiously throughout the school year.
I want to hug the version of me, in 8th grade, who was afraid to speak to people outside of their hallmates because I didn’t believe they would like me. I want to show them my friends across camp—some of whom were my hallmates, but many of whom were not—and tell them that it will be okay.
I want to take the hands of the version of myself from 9th grade, who looked at the energy and goofiness of the leader of Boker Big Bang every morning and thought, I could never be like that in front of the whole camp, and I want to pull them with me into the future. I want them to see us, 75% of the mornings this summer, mic’d in the outdoor sanctuary, singing Modeh Ani and yelling about how it’s another beautiful day.
I want to tell them to be goofy. I want to tell them to not be afraid. I want them to know that we aren’t afraid anymore. I want to tell them that we found our voice. I want to tell them that we use it. I want to make them giggle with our over-the-top dancing at Shabbat every week. I want them to understand that we have a real, tangible impact on this camp and the people here. I want them to know that we did it.
Boker Tov, URJ 6 Points Sci-Tech Academy. Let’s do this.
