summer camp

sorry for the slack posting this week. The judge I intern for hosts / sponsors / founded what is referred to in the community as "Law Camp." Every summer 30 rising highschool Sr.s from all over Loudoun & Faulkier counties spend a week with volunteer attorneys etc where they are given a hypothetical accident and investigate & litigate whatever side they are assigned to. It's pretty cool, in that semi-dorky way. Hey, I went to debate camp when I was their age.

At the end of the week, they argue their cases in real courtrooms with real judges - which can pretty intimidating for law school students, much less highschool kids.

Are they "kids"? That was the weirdest thing for me. As a chaperone or whatever, I realized how old I have gotten. I've never worked with kids before, and it was much more difficult to relate to them - or not relate - than I expected. I was never that young. Where is the 10th grader in me yelling that when I'm a parent I'll never forget what it was like to be my children's age?

The real moral of the story is that working with kids is amazingly exhausting. Everyone out there who works with kids is like "duh" and everyone who has never worked with kids probably thinks they know, but you don't know. And as a buddie of mine who taught middle school Spanish pointed out, I had it easy. Try chasing 30 7th graders around Madrid.