I officially earned my last name (Cook)

Lesson 4- It’s not about me

This past summer, I spent nearly 3 months up in Durango, Colorado working at a utopian-esque community called Camp Kivu. Owned by the same company that had sent me on the Gap Year before college, Kivu was a summer camp that had become a place of refuge, honesty, and love to thousands of kids and staff members alike over the years. As this was the last summer of Camp Kivu (they will be focusing on the Gap Year from now on), I’m so glad I was there to learn TONS of valuable life lessons before they officially closed. One of the most memorable and tangible lessons was about humility and service. While I am pretty invested in “service” back at Vanderbilt, I had spent much of last semester pondering what humility actually meant. I don’t want to be someone who, like the Pharisees, serves to impress others. I want my life to be about more than myself and my own contentment. As a result, I had read books about humility (okay, a single book), prayed about it, and talked to my friends about it. Growing up, I theorized that being humble basically meant thinking that you suck. The opposite of arrogance, so to speak. I spent last few months looking closer to challenge that notion. However, it wasn’t until I was a camp cook that I truly understood.

First, it’s necessary to understand that camp life is completely separate from normal societal life. The rules are different; there is no money and thus no materialism, little emphasis on appearance, and little control over plans or your position. You are an employee above an individual. Each term (every 2 weeks), you are assigned a new position at camp; girls can be cooks, kitchies (basically kitchen maids), counselors, or waitenance (or “Women’s Maintenance,” it was a position for the last term only that allowed women staff to join the usually male-dominated group of Maintenance. As you’d expect, I was one of three girls assigned to this fun manual labor job). While you can request to not be placed in one job you really don’t want, nothing is guaranteed. Though being a cook is highly rewarding, it is also unanimously the most difficult in some ways. As luck would have it, I was a cook twice: during retreats and then again during 3rd term. In retreats, we had 3 cooks for about 250 kids. Consequently, we had to serve 6 meals daily instead of 3, and the work was exhausting. Waking up at 5am every morning, we would have about 2 hours away from the kitchen during our 14 hour work day. While the term only lasted about 10 days, it felt inexplicably long. Nonetheless, I found amazing friendships during that time (LOTS of time to talk as we worked in the kitchen), and I felt a sense of accomplishment and ownership. Despite all I had learned, I “crossed out” the option of being a cook during the next terms, but I was still assigned to the position. Undoubtedly I have my last name to blame. Despite my initial desire to stay out of the kitchen, it turned out to be fantastic. Though physically exhausting, cooking offered the chance to truly test my dedication to service as I worked hard behind the scenes (plus, it was easier the second time around as there were less kids and thus less meals to cook). There’s nothing flashy about cleaning out a fryer large enough to bathe in, but I knew it was necessary. The head cook, Abby, became one of my best friends from the summer, and she was consistent in reminding me that what we did had value. Occasionally, she would make me stop what I was doing to look out at the dining hall and see all the campers smiling and laughing over a freshly cooked meal. “We made that possible” she would say. Cooking wasn’t always fun, but someone had to do it. It wasn’t about me or what I wanted to do. I had the opportunity to help make the camp run as smoothly as possible, and that was what I was hired to do. Although that experience seems somewhat removed from my normal life at college (where I barely even cook for myself), I’m learning that its applications are limitless. I still want to live for more than myself and think of how I affect others. I realize that the way I act at school reflects on more than just me; I represent all the organizations I’m a part of, the campus ministry I go to, and the beliefs I claim to follow. I don’t want to be driven by legalistic appearances, but I also don’t want personal pleasure to be my driving motivation in life. I hope to live a life that glorifies God by loving others, even when it isn’t convenient. While the specifics may look different for many people, this idea has helped me evaluate how I want to act and even the way I think. Despite all the processing I did before the summer, it took scrubbing on my hands and knees for me to see that humility isn’t thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less altogether.

A legitimate candid of me asleep in a cabinet; clearly exhausted (but still really enjoying it!)

During lunch one day, all the kitchen staff cross-dressed as dudes and created a flash-mob dance. I think we thoroughly startled all the kids, but we had a great time doing it.

Bathing in a fryer because I basically lived in it those weeks anyway