First day is always full of questions

Written by Bailey Kaufman Tuesday, 28 August 2012 13:04

The first day of school is always full of questions: “What class do you have fourth hour?” “Who’s the new kid?” “When is the first football game?” And, the most important question of all, “How was your summer?”

When asked this question on previous first days, I always smiled and responded with the basic, “My summer was good! How about yours?” And that was always the truth; my past summer breaks have been good.

For instance, one summer I had mononucleosis. For two whole months, it seemed like all I did was sleep and eat. Then there was the year my room was infested with bed bugs. I slept on an air mattress in the middle of my bare room the whole summer vacation. And I can’t forget last year, when two of my closest friends went to Africa and left me alone in Hillsboro for a whole summer.

Hey, at least they brought me back a key chain.

OK, who am I kidding? Other than annual week-long family vacations, my previous summer breaks have been pathetic. But as this summer crept closer and closer, I decided to reverse my summer slump. No more sitting at home refreshing my Facebook news feed every five minutes or lying on the living room couch watching back to back episodes of “Full House.”

I made a promise to myself that the summer before my senior year of high school would be full of adventures and excitement.

I started the summer of 2012 with a bang by traveling to what David Letterman calls “the greatest city in the world.” I could fill the whole newspaper with my thoughts and stories about New York City, but I’ll save you the reading and sum it up in these three words: I love NY. I even have a T-shirt that says so.

Once I returned home from the “city that never sleeps,” I had four short days to recover from the withdrawal before I packed up for another adventure. This time, though, instead of flying across the country, I drove down the road to Tabor College to be a junior camp counselor.

I would like to take this time to personally apologize to all of my former camp counselors for any loss of sleep or physical and/or emotional exhaustion I may have caused as a camper. Junior high girls are crazy. From explaining why sixth grade is much too early to have a boyfriend to hearing One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful” every five minutes, I was completely out of energy by the end of the week.

But despite the challenges and lack of sleep, it was an amazing week of serving God and getting to know some awesome girls. I will definitely come back next year.

After camp, my family and I took a trip to Indiana to visit a college and do some sightseeing in the Midwest. I had a scheduled visit with Indiana Univer­sity, a beautiful campus in a very quaint eastern college town.

Stay tuned to find out if I choose to attend college there; I’m still pretty undecided.

By this time, June was a thing of the past and July was in full swing. In July, I kept busy with a week of leading vacation Bible school in Oklahoma with the Parkview youth group and a second week of camp counseling, this time at Kansas Bible Camp. The two weeks were so busy that they almost mesh together in my mind. By the time they were over, I was ready to sleep for a month.

I just realized that while describing my eventful summer, lack of sleep seemed to be a recurring theme. I guess my adventurous and exciting summer came at a price, but in the end, it was totally worth it. I would trade in my sleep any day if it means traveling the world or serving the Lord.

So, this year on the first day of school, when someone asks me how my summer was, I can honestly say, “My summer was amazing, exciting and full of adventure!”

Let’s just hope I’m awake enough to answer.