By Molly Auerbach
As someone who started going to Camp Ramah in California at the age of nine, was a camper there for seven years and will be returning this upcoming summer for my fifth summer on staff, Amy Skopp Cooper was one of the speakers I was most excited to hear from.
Ever since I was young I have always looked up to the head figures of my camp and wondered how they became so lucky to have their entire lives surround the purpose of camp. I found that hearing about Amy’s journey to reach the position she is in today gave me much more insight into the camp world, how she got to the place where she is today and even allowed me to think about if a future in camping movements is a possibility for myself.
Of all the things Amy said to us, one thing, in particular, stood out to me; she said it is so important to take kids seriously, even when they have big dreams. Amy’s career path all started with her one day telling one of her counselors that she wanted to become the director of Ramah one day, and it was because her role models took her seriously that she was able to get to the place that she is today. Children may be young, but they are our future, which is one of the reason the job of being a counselor is so important today.
I have always thought of my job as a camp counselor to be very influential, but hearing it from Amy helped reinforce the fact that being a counselor is one of the most important jobs a young adult can do today. And with all of the priceless advice that Amy gave us, she ended it with one of the most important and often forgotten about pieces of advice- to SMILE! Smiling and spreading happiness is one of the things that I find most important in this world, that not enough people necessarily do, so it was very refreshing to hear this advice from such a well-known and important figure in our Jewish world.
