Julia Nomberg is a senior pole vaulter on the women's track & field team, and an integrated marketing communications major. This summer, she accepted an offer as a marketing intern with ESRI, a GIS mapping and software company based in Redlands, California. However, due to COVID-19, her internship was cancelled, and she needed to find a new way to spend her summer. 
 
Knowing that the summer ahead of her was going to be like no other, Nomberg decided that she wanted to go back to sleepaway camp because she had loved it as a kid and had stopped attending it due to sports. After performing a lot of research, she ultimately accepted a job as a counselor at Camp Wekeela in Maine. Becoming a counselor was something that Nomberg knew she wanted to do because she wanted to give kids the type of experience she remembered having as a kid, even with the coronavirus pandemic occurring.
 
"They needed a fun summer, and they needed a space to not think about all the things going on in the outside world and to just be happy," Nomberg said. "I wanted to help give them the experience that I had where I bonded with my counselors, experienced new things, and had the time of my life."
 
Nomberg served as a Cabin Leader on top of being a counselor, which meant she also helps to run certain activities. She was able to land in Outdoor Adventure where she would help run events like ziplining, fire building, hiking, trust building activities, and more. 
 
One activity that she reflected on was a team building activity which involved climbing a ten-foot wall. In this activity, the whole group works together to lift each person over the wall and ends when the final person gets over. The last person is the most difficult though because they do not have anybody to help lift them over and can only rely on the people at the top of the wall. This was a challenge that Nomberg encountered.
 
"I was the last person, so I had to take a running start and run up the wall, grab my teammates' hands and help pull my body over the wall," Nomberg said.
 
As the summer progressed, she continued to do this activity with her campers and progressively were able to improve. She was able to connect this experience to what it is like playing on a sports team.
 
"In athletics, it is easy to begin seeing your teammates as competition, and animosity forms," Nomberg said. "We all have the same end goal, though, and this helped show me what it means to work as a team."
 
One of Nomberg's favorite aspects about the summer was that being at camp was its own COVID-free bubble, meaning they did not have to wear masks and could be in contact with each other. Nomberg explains how this was something that was so different from what these kids were experiencing for so long and was much needed for them.
 
"We were not allowed to leave camp at all, even for days off, but it made us closer," Nomberg said. "Kids were vulnerable this summer, and they went from being at home with their families all the time to being surrounded by children of their age. Camp is loud, full of energy, and it has a structure which many kids hadn't had in months."
 
Camp helped to re-open Nomberg's eyes to what both non-quarantine life was like, but also allowed her to just have fun. She explained how doing some of these activities with the kids was so enjoyable and that even as a college senior, these were activities that she valued. 
 
"The biggest thing is that it's okay to slow down and be a kid sometimes," Nomberg said. "I let go and just lived in the moment, and I had the best summer of my life."
 
Over the course of the summer, she learned a lot from working with the kids. Some of these things were patience, hard work, leadership, positivity, and versatility. One of the most important things that she learned, though, was how much of a leader she had become. At the end of the summer, the camp has what they call "College Weekend" where the entire camp is divided and competes against each other in different activities. 
 
"A Dean is someone who goes above and beyond every day, who is a strong leader, a hard worker, a positive person and someone who is just overall, a big camp person," Nomberg said. 
 
Although her team did not win, Nomberg was honored to have been selected to be a Dean, especially because it was only her first year there as a counselor. Nomberg said she spoke to one of the supervisors who selected her for this role after and asked why she was chosen. 
 
"The best Deans are the ones who don't expect it," the supervisor said about Nomberg. "He also mentioned how I don't see myself the way other people do, and I don't always realize how much the little things we do can actually influence other people."