Camp songs are something that only camp people will understand. My school friends never understood why I had to skip In My Life every time it played in the car, and they probably never will. I went to JCC Camp Chi from 6th grade through 8th grade, didn't go freshman and sophomore year, then made the spontaneous decision to come back for my SIT summer junior year. To be honest, I never felt like a camp person before SIT summer. The only thing that I always resonated with was camp songs, and they were something that always made me feel like I belonged. 

I began going to Chi because one of my childhood best friends convinced my two other day-camp friends and me to go. This would be my first time going away from home for a long period of time, and 4 weeks seemed like an eternity. I don’t remember why my mom let me go, but thank god she did. This summer was a pivotal point in my life. It was the summer before 6th grade, and I had just switched dance studios, quit piano, and was about to start at my middle school. It felt like my world had changed in an instant, and camp was just another new beginning. Being introduced to the camp lifestyle and feeling of freedom from my parents was exhilarating, not to mention how fast I clicked with my cabin. It felt like I immediately gained another family, and I never felt so loved and so much belonging with people who I wasn’t related to. Additionally, being introduced to all the traditions I had to look forward to and seeing all the SITs gave me something greater to look forward to. Not to mention, finally feeling a connection to my Judaism made me feel empowered and gave me a great sense of pride for my community and heritage. The camp song I looked forward to at each song session was Oh What A Life by Emma Jane. This song is a direct love song to Camp Chi, even referencing the dirt path and Noar deck, and hearing this song and finally having something to relate to gave me so much comfort and connection with others. I had found another family beside my bloodline, and a new group of friends who understood me in a way my home friends never could. 

The next summer I was truly ecstatic to see my friends again. But as soon as I stepped on the bus, I knew it was different. My cabin had been anointed the “popular cabin”, which quickly pulled my friends away from friendships within our cabin to relationships with the guy cabins. As a baby 7th grader who was still growing into herself, I felt more and more distance between me and my friends, who seemed to grow up way faster than me. I watched as each of my friends I’d known since 6th grade completely changed into people I didn’t know, and who didn’t want anything to do with me. I have a vivid memory of walking to breakfast every Saturday and counting down to the last week. The days had never felt so long, and I found myself missing home more than ever. I had heard the song River and Roads by The Head and the Heart plenty of times last year, but I had never related to it as deeply as this summer. The past year, I never experienced homesickness, and frankly didn't connect with this song much at all. This year, however, it felt like it was speaking directly to me. I missed my family and yearned to be back with my home friends who were just as weird as I was. 

I decided to come back the next summer in hopes that things would be different. If it had been so great in the past, maybe it would be again. And well, I was very wrong. This might have been one of the worst summers I've had, and I regretted coming back every single day. At camp, it was pretty much last summer but infinitely more severe. The isolation from my friends was less subtle this time. In fact, it was blatantly obvious I had become the girl no one liked in the cabin. I can attribute this development to two things. Firstly, I was still figuring out who I was, and I wasn't as socially and physically developed as my friends. I was definitely mature, but I didn't have cute clothes, I didn't know how to do my makeup, and I was still very scared of boys. All the other girls in my cabin had it all figured out, and I honestly was stuck behind. Secondly, there was a new girl in our cabin. As I am writing this now, I can say she is an incredible person and has grown to be someone whose friendship I will endlessly value. However, at this moment in time I couldn't disagree more. She was the typical popular girl, and as soon as she joined our cabin, she brought my best friends with her. I mentioned before how my friends just developed faster than me; well, this girl made the gap between us indescribably greater. I found a great deal of comfort in reading. I had brought an absurd amount of books thinking I would never read them, and I couldn't have been more wrong. Every night, to distract myself from the isolation I felt and to keep myself from crying, I read my books. I read a total of eight books over four weeks, and that was probably the only thing that got me through. At the end of the summer, each cabin makes a plaque with a nickname for each person referencing an inside joke. As you can probably guess, no one could think of one for me. So my name on the plaque was Talia “Library” Madorsky in a reference to the books I read. Creative right? Meanwhile back at home, I had just left my friend group and was experiencing severe isolation in my middle school. Prior to coming back, I saw camp as my escape from home, and once I was at camp, I felt as if I didn't belong anywhere. This summer, my favorite camp song was Sailboat by Ben Rector. At the time, I truly did feel as the song described. Without any connections or destination in mind, I saw myself isolated and alone. 

It was because of these experiences that I didn't put up a fight when my mom suggested that would be my last year. My excuse to anyone who asked why I didn't come back was summer school freshman year, then the price point of PNW (Pacific Northwest) Sophomore year. In reality, it didn't matter either way. While I stayed in contact with camp people for a little while, I became so overtaken by the demands of the high school dance team freshman year that I completely fell out of touch with them. I didn't care to stay in touch either after the past few summers, which is one of my greatest regrets. I was an active member of BBYO in 8th grade, but after not coming to camp, I didn't feel the need to come back, let alone have the energy or time for it. I truly became an outsider among my Jewish friends after that and was completely removed from that entire group. I had my school friends, of course, but most of them weren't Jewish and just couldn't understand my experiences in that way. I didn’t know it, but I longed for connection to Judaism, and losing touch with BBYO and camp friends made it infinitely more difficult to find it. 

Sophomore year started as more of the same, except the fact that I quit the dance team. This revelation of how insanely terrible it was for me led me to come back to BBYO in order to regain that sense of purpose and belonging. At first it was certainly uncomfortable. The dynamic was different, the people were different, and it wasn't the same Aviva I was expecting. As I slowly found my way back in and became comfortable with the new Aviva, I began to reconnect with my camp friends from other chapters. At this point, I had matured greatly since 8th grade and became a much stronger, confident version of myself. It was because of this that I began to find some sense of friendship in those people. Don't get me wrong, things were still very awkward, and I was extremely out of place. Nonetheless, they started inviting me to birthdays, making an effort to talk to me, and recognizing me as part of that community. SIT summer was something I looked forward to since 6th grade, but my experience my last year of camp led me to push that idea from my mind. However, my childhood best friend made me reconsider. All she told me was “Please come SIT summer”. That was literally it. Hearing that I was wanted somewhere was honestly all I needed to convince me to go back. And so that same day I begged my mom to sign me up, and she did. This decision was something I heavily regretted for the next months leading up to camp. My immense dread stemmed from the realization that I had no friends at camp, and was forced to turn down summer opportunities such as concerts, lake house trips, and internships. You name it, I was going to miss it for a place I didn’t feel like I belonged in. I felt greater FOMO than you can imagine, and would beg my mom every day to cancel my signup. However, that wasn't an option. 

This next summer at camp is frankly impossible to capture in words in the best possible way. However, it definitely took some warming up. At the bus stop, I lurked around some girls from BBYO, but never really contributed to any conversation. I was slowly coming to terms with the fact that this would be my life for the rest of the summer (Spoiler: I was super wrong). Then we began getting on the bus, and I realized I was the only person without someone to sit with. So, that entire bus ride I sat alone, front row, sulking while everyone else was ecstatic for the next eight weeks. After the first few days, I became someone new. I completely came out of my shell and found a new version of myself that I truly loved. I was confident, social, outgoing, and creative. I was genuinely in a flow state. Previously, I knew exactly what caused my character development. This time was definitely different. I want to say it was the people, and maybe it was. But most of these people I had known since 6th grade or prior. Another factor could have been my SIT staff. My SIT staff is probably the best bunch of people you could have the pleasure of knowing, and they had a massive impact on me for sure. One staff member, for example, got me through that first stage of not fitting in by listening to me, giving me advice, and making me feel seen and loved. Another one resembled my older brother in a way. He had high expectations for all of us, but made me in particular feel an obligation to be the best SIT and person possible. He was my biggest cheerleader, hyping me up through every accomplishment and enabling me to impact my SIT class by giving me confidence and spirit. Every single one of them had a direct impact on me and completely altered not just my camp trajectory, but also my life. A week in, I could easily say I had best friends at camp and was lucky enough to find people who truly got me. I easily moved past the events of previous summers, and became so at home and connected with every single SIT. That summer taught me what it meant to be happy in a way I never knew before. Every single day I felt an overwhelming sense of joy and gratitude for every person, event, place, and activity we did. Even through the moments I was overcome with emotion or faced low moments, I was still so unbelievably happy. Feeling this way for the first time led me to reconsider my purpose in life. I would often ask myself how I could replicate my experience after camp. The answer is you can’t. It is so unique and different from anything else, and not a day goes by without wishing I was in room 12 at Perl with 6 other SIT girls debriefing their night on my bed. This summer was filled with songs that spoke to me in new ways, like For Ages, Don’t Stop the Music, and Happy. However, my song was Waste by Phish. This song, while appearing relatively simple, means so much more to me than imaginable. I have always been an overachiever, and before camp I regretted wasting my summer at camp. My school friends constantly told me how I made the wrong choice and was losing eight weeks of resume building. However, I had it completely backwards. Those people, the memories, and experiences I had at SIT summer were anything but a waste. In fact, that was the most impactful eight weeks of my life, and will remain that way forever. This summer led me to realize what was actually important to me. And no, it's not my ACT score, “dream” college, or future career. It’s wasting my time with those incredible, hilarious, creative, beautiful, perfect people. 

Now that I'm back to real life, I can’t listen to that song without becoming a ball of emotion. In fact, I shed a few tears writing about SIT summer just now. Not because of sadness, but due to the significance it had on who I am today. I hear that song in a different way than I did during the summer. During camp, it sounded like reassurance that I wasn’t losing time in any way. I was with my people, and overachieving and resume building could wait. Now that my family is split across states and countries, it sounds like longing for my purpose and meaning again. It sounds like yearning for the immense joy I felt every second. It sounds like the feeling that I was a puzzle piece that finally found my place, but is now mixed up and has to search for that place all over again. For this reason, my school friends won’t understand why I call a song a “camp song”. Because Waste, Sailboat, Rivers and Roads, and Oh what a life aren't just songs. They carry such significance, feelings, and memories that only camp people can grasp. 

For anyone considering cutting their camp experience short or choosing to stay home over the summer for college applications, I strongly urge you to reconsider. Opportunities to advance your career will come and go, but this is the kind of thing you can't get back. Take it from someone who stretches herself as thin as it gets: everything can wait. Opportunities like this don't come every day; in fact, they come once in a lifetime. Take a summer away; your college application can wait.