Alumni Answers: What was your best (or worst!) summer job?
Did you spend your summers comforting homesick children and singing Kumbaya as a camp counsellor? Or were you untangling leashes and cursing the neighbourhood cat who taunted the dogs you walked? Perhaps you got the best tan of your life patrolling the beaches as a lifeguard.
UM Today wants to hear about your best – or worst! – summer jobs for our new Alumni Answers series. Send your summer job stories to alumni_answers [at] umanitoba [dot] ca by July 6, 2018.
Alumni Answers is our way of building community with our alumni by sharing memories, ideas, and opinions with one another. Every month, we’ll pose a new question with an opportunity to learn, laugh, and ponder together. To get next month’s question sent straight to your inbox: email alumni_answers [at] umanitoba [dot] cawith “Sign me up!” in the subject line.
Working at YMCA-YWCA Camp Stephens was the best summer job, and the only summer job I’ve ever had as I worked there for a number of years. From working as a consellor to guiding canoe trips this place offered challenges and experienced that forstered personal growth for me and surely for the youth I was working with. Next to my family I credit this camp to helping form who I am today as a person. Amazing experience on an island on Lake of the Woods where I forged lifelong friendships and even where I met my husband.
Best summer job was working in Winnipeg doing building maintenance. It was very practical and I was able to meet several Bosnian refugees who gave me a whole new perspective of the world. I also volunteered with a youth group on Watts Avenue. That too was an eye-opener on how little some kids had and how grateful they were for learning outdoor cooking and skills. I showed these kids how to rescue-carry an injured person and this little 10 year old kid picked me up and walked with 150 pounds on his back. Those kids had next to nothing, but they had determination.