Hello everyone!
First things first, I apologize for posting this a few days late; I overestimated how much free time I would have at camp. The important thing is I am back now and ready to share the wonderful experience I had!! In case you haven’t read my recent posts that referenced me going to this camp, I am a new member of my school’s yearbook staff (I joined for this upcoming year) and every year they attend this four-day summer camp at Chapman University. The camp is put on by our publishing company and involves a variety of classes and activities- we also got the chance to get to know each other, stay in the dorms, and have lots of fun! Today I’m just going to cover everything that went down during our first day at camp.
I was nervous about going to camp beforehand; two of my best friends were going to be there as well, but other than that I knew no one. As soon as my mom dropped me off at school and I got in the car, I began talking to the three other girls I was driving up with. We set up carpools since our staff is pretty small (14 people attended, but for reference our staff is around 20 total) so we weren’t going to take a bus; I also thought this was a great icebreaker to have some initial conversations with people before we even arrived! One of the girls in the car happened to be one of our editor-in-chiefs, so it was awesome to talk to her about that and ask her some questions about yearbook in general. The drive was supposed to be about two hours and we left at 8:15, but we hit a ton of traffic around LAX and ended up stopping to use the bathroom, so we didn’t arrive at Chapman until almost 11:00.
We checked into our rooms and I was excited to find that one of my aforementioned best friends was my roommate! All of our rooms were in Henley Hall on the third floor, and the dorms were actually very nice. I stayed in a dorm at UCSB for cheer camp last year, and the dorms were tiny, gross, and had communal bathrooms. The Chapman dorms we stayed in were spacious; they were clean, there was a nice heating/air conditioning system we definitely utilized, and we had a bathroom for only the two of us to share. It makes sense since it is a smaller and private university, but it still really impressed me (plus, the only other experience I have with college dorms was with UCSB, so my expectations weren’t very high!). We organized our stuff and settled in quickly. Our first camp-provided meal was dinner, so we ate sack lunches in our rooms before meeting up with the rest of our staff in the common room.
At the camp, one of the main goals is to develop your theme for the year’s book and start designing certain spreads based on that. We spent some time throwing around theme ideas and talking about goals for the yearbook until it was time to attend the camp welcome session in Memorial Hall. As we walked over there (it was in a building in the more central campus, our dorms were across the street in kind of a separate compound), I couldn’t believe how gorgeous and peaceful the campus was! It was also nice that it was so walkable and compact; it made it much easier to navigate. The welcome session was straightforward- it outlined what we would be doing and we got to play some spirited games. The theme of the day was superheroes so we were all wearing superhero t-shirts, capes, and masks. A speaker also explained the concept of theme and coverage in the yearbook to us, which was definitely helpful for me as a complete newbie.
After the session ended, I hung out in my dorm with my friend/roomie and our other friend until we met everyone else in the common room again to continue theme discussion. We also went around and introduced ourselves to everyone which was super nice! Everyone was extremely welcoming and the yearbook staff is definitely a mini-family, I felt very comfortable and at-home. At 4:15, we had to head to our first class. We had chosen our class when we signed up for camp; I was taking Yearbook 1 (a beginning class that covered the basics of all disciplines), along with my other friend that was a newbie and two other people from our staff. It was cool getting to walk across campus and find our way there by ourselves. In class, we learned what a theme was and brainstormed unique activities at our school that we could later write about in the book.
When class let out, it was finally time for dinner. Everyone was starving since no one had really packed that sustainable of a lunch; we basically ran to the dining hall and were ready to gorge. The dining hall was right next to our dorm which was convenient. I had two plates of buttered pasta (picky eater things!), some fruit, and two chocolate chip cookies. They didn’t have too many options, but the things I ate were very good and I was satisfied (I definitely enjoyed the food at UCSB more when I was there). Everyone pretty much wolfed down their food so we still had a lot of extra time left; we hung out in our dorms and had some more downtime.
At 7:00 we had to go to an official theme development session where an instructor helped us and other schools’ staff on really deciding on a theme. We came up with the theme “What Will Be” (themes are usually little phrases like that) based off of the period of transition our school is in for this upcoming year and the fact that our EICs really want to revamp the style of our book in comparison to its minimalistic layout in previous years. The instructor gave us some critiques and came up with ideas for design elements we could use (you need to have three solid design elements on your cover that will appear throughout the book) and we got to study other schools’ books from last year.
We felt pretty satisfied with our progress and coming up with the theme in that session; once it was over, it was time to go to another event in Memorial Hall. It was probably the funniest thing that happened at camp- it was a Battle of The Schools event hosted by some DJ, but the whole thing was just hilarious. The music choices were all kind of old songs (think middle school dance) and there were lasers and some form of light show. The DJ was just really one of a kind and had us doing weird games/competitions/dances. He had someone in an inflatable baby costume come out and dance with no explanation as to what a huge baby had to do with the event. At one point there was a trivia game for some reason, and every school was cheating by looking up the answers and mouthing it to their representative on stage (guilty as charged!). Interestingly enough, we ended up winning the competition somehow (we’re really not sure how since it didn’t even make sense) which meant we are the lucky winners of a free party hosted by those DJs at our school- can’t wait for that!
We got back to our rooms around 10:40pm and were completely exhausted. My roomie and I quickly showered and got ready for bed before just talking and relaxing until lights out. Lights out was at 11:30pm; we continued talking for a little while after we turned the lights off, but said goodnight soon after. I had a little bit of trouble falling asleep (sometimes I have a hard time adjusting to sleeping in a new environment) but the beds were decently comfortable and they provided a pillow so with mine that I brought I had two to sleep on. The day had quickly come to a close, and left me excited for the much, much crazier next day.
I hope you guys enjoyed this perspective on what it was like to go to such an interesting type of camp! I know some of the things mentioned are a bit confusing if you’re not in yearbook, so let me know if you have any questions or would like me to make a post explaining yearbook-related things! I’m definitely a huge newbie myself so I have a lot to learn still, but this weekend immersing myself in everything at camp really taught me a lot already. I will be posting about the other 3 days of camp as soon as possible (I’m writing this on the day I got back), but feel free to request other content! Lots more to come 🙂
-Brooke
adventures of a typical high school student 