This post is a play on an essay that is frequently read at camp: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarden. I've found that so much of communal living and parts of my job here are second nature to me, because of all my years at camp. I've unknowingly been prepared to be a sanitation/ composting/ recycling/ behavior managing freak. Hopefully in a helpful way....
Here is what camp super duper prepared me for:
How to walk alone at night without a light
How to use an electric percolator
How nice it is to clean out the percolator at night instead
of in the morning right before you’re trying to make coffee
How to load a dish rack to go into a sanitizer so that a lot
of stuff can fit in but everything gets clean
That a sanitizer is not the same as a dishwasher
Knowing that Simple Green degreases, Bleach kills germs
How to think/ cook for people with allergies
It's important to change the mop water often
Automatically knowing where every weird food item is stored in the kitchen, fridge, and dry storage areas
How to get a large group of people quiet quickly
How to deftly answer non-sequitor questions without losing
my train of thought
The importance of planning ahead for lessons and gathering
materials ahead of time Make a back-up plan and a rain plan
Do not go in the kitchen without close-toed shoes (though I
have learned that better here)
Sometimes you can’t save every food item
If something has been in the fridge for too long, just chuck
it in the compost and don't be sad about it
How to think on my feet and whip out a game for any situation
How to quickly respond to first aid incidents
How meat should be stored in the fridge
What can and cannot be recycled
How to manage a group of crazy children at a meal
How to have stimulate interesting table conversations but
keep it from getting too rowdy
How to cook for mass amounts of people
How to cook for mass amounts of people
and a billion other things.
