My Year Out

This is a singe page, chronicling my life from 6th form College, through my days in the Univestity of Surrey, my gap year, and more or less everything I did. It goes to show that gap years can be very productive if you want them to be. Enjoy. There's a lot here. Sorry.

---

I didn’t plan to take a year out. I was afraid that it was what would I have to put up with if I didn’t get into a university. I have learned that you do not decide where your life goes, because things happen. Mistakes are made. Your whole life can turn one-eighty with a subtle movement. There is nothing you can do about it. This story is an epic adventure briefly following the progress through my transition from sixth form, through the dark, uncertain winding path of my gap year, and back into the fresh, supposedly familiar, student life of higher education. This is a chapter of my life I will share with you, because you may have missed this episode and forgot to set up the VCR, and maybe you’re thinking you can buy the DVD later. Since that’s expensive and is usually released a year later, I’ll tell you now.
Let’s start at the beginning...

September 2001- June 2002:
I had to make my four A level choices. I chose Geography, a subject I loved but always achieved the grade just below the top A* in my GCSE’s. This was surely an easy A level I could cope with. Next, I chose Maths. Now where couldn’t I get without not failing Maths?! I did well in my GCSE; I got the top mark on the paper that was taken a year early. Mathematics for me was a dead cert. Then I chose physics. I enjoyed it in GCSE science, and it was very mathematiky, and I loved the Astronomy side of it. Plenty of yummy space stuff in Physics, and especially after achieving my Astronomy GCSE, and not many people have one of those! So one more choice to make. I had a choice between History, PE, GNVQ IT, or English Literature. I didn’t take History for GCSE, so what hope would I have for A level? That is if I wanted to take it anyway. I did not want to do PE, firstly because I was generally unfit and obese and secondly it was not a subject I felt would be generally be worth my effort. I wanted A levels rather than GNVQ’s, so I did not take IT, and I found English Literature at GCSE boring. What was I to do?
No way do I regret the decision to take English Literature as an A-level. At the time I thought that I wanted to do something sciency, mathematiky, or physicy. I now think that ‘English Literature’ is the most important word I have ever circled when I made my A level decisions on that day in 2001. Not that I knew it at the time.
I had a good run in the first year, got D’s in my Maths and Physics, and B’s in my Geography and English Literature. I thought I got less out of what I put in. Now I had to decide which to subject to drop. I still didn’t know what to do with my results, whereas everyone else did. I vowed to seek advice and avenge my grades in Maths and Physics…

September 2002 – June 2003
I knew that in 365 days I would be moving into a university flat, fingers crossed, and I needed as much money as I could get. I restarted work at Somerfield on Saturdays for eight hours at four pounds sixty an hour. It was probably good for the CV as well.
This was the year that I went visiting my university for making my decision on where I wanted to go. I had decided from advice form Dad and the careers advisor that I could easily go for a degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Naturally, being a bit too ambitious, I set myself the goal of an MEng degree at Cardiff, the best university in the world for Civil Engineering. That meant I needed an A, a B, and a C. I planned the A to be in English Literature if I worked really hard because I got a B without trying in my AS level. The B was to be in Geography, as that was my best attempt and as high as I would get, and the C in my third and final subject.
I still did not want to drop any of my subjects. I would have dropped English Literature, but I carried it on because it was good for my university tariff points! I would never drop Maths full stop, I enjoyed Geography and I got good results from the work I put in, and Physics was a genuinely interesting. I dropped Physics. It was not mandatory for me to have physics to go to Cardiff, but Maths and Geography were. The most irrelevant, English Literature, should have been dropped. That would have been too risky for me – I might not get into any universities! I made such a fuss about trying to get to a university because of the urban myths of gap years – you waste a year by sitting around the house, or working in Somerfield going beep…beep…beep…on the checkouts. I would become depressed, because no university wants wasters, all my friends would be at their own university, and I would be stuck on the Island wondering ‘where would I be if I didn’t drop English Literature?’ So just to be flexible I put down a few BEng courses. My UCAS form was full of Civil Engineering courses, bar one, which was ‘Environmental Hazards and Disaster Management’. That looked exciting and fun, and a great idea at the time. I was prepared to put it down as a firm choice after I dropped physics, but my mother did not like the idea. I knew it wasn’t her choice, but she talked me out doing it. Civil Engineering at Cardiff it was!
Revision cards were produced like nothing on earth, classical music was being played in my room all day, and I was revising day in and day out to get the grade standards I needed! Extra classes, free periods, Easter holidays and study leave weren’t enough. Revision and work at the store put tremendous strain on my mentality for a short period leading up to the exams. I just had to keep smiling. I wasn’t going to pass any exams in a bad mood. Crunch time came along, and I thought my exams went very well. I knew I deserved every success. I was looking forward to my results in late August. So I worked for the remainder of the summer holidays, and made plans for what take to Cardiff.


When you get the DVD, make sure you skip this bit. Or just go straight to the outtakes, I don’t care.




2003
I did not feel as confident when I was waiting to open my envelope on the 14th of August, and rightly so. I got an A in English Literature, which was a good pay off for fifteen practice essays the week before. I got a B in Geography, which is to be expected with my luck anyway, but no C’s. I achieved a solid D in Maths. A pass alone in Maths is very difficult, and a D is reserved only for the geniuses. Anything higher, and you are dangerous to society. Still, I realised that I did not meet Cardiff’s criteria. I needed at least a C in Maths. Any other subject may have been fine to fall short with, but all the same, I was rejected. I phoned my insurance university, Surrey, and they accepted me probably through sympathy. It was a university with a good reputation, they sold great hot chocolate, and the Guildford Tescos Café employed people who gave more change than they should, so I was still looking forward to it. A few weeks later, after a short surfing holiday in Cornwall with mum, Martin, auntie, uncle, and our twin cousins and getting devastatingly burnt feet, everyone met up at the Waterside pub for the last time before we all went our separate ways, and not see each other for a good few months.
Two days before I left for university, I had to go up to London for an ICE Institute of Civil Engineers scholarship meeting, to have an interview and plead for money that I needed (secretly for jaffa cakes) for university living. I met some nice people, watched a tearfully boring presentation from each company all wanting to sell themselves, and finally went to my interview. Laing O’Rourke, Hyder Construction, and a really obscure company that was probably an offshoot from Time Team inc. interviewed me. They asked me questions. Horrid questions about digging up roads, construction finances, and why I did English Literature as an A level and as a Civil Engineer. Needless to say, I didn’t get a scholarship, but I got a pen, a keyring, bookmark, fleece, and a whole load of glossy paper with pictures of men in hard hats branding the company logos with a cheesy slogans splashed across the top of the pages as compensation.
So off to university I went. I got a massive en-suite bedroom on the first floor in a block of flats, number 66, on campus. The university was all in one place, so it was one of those lazy places where you rolled out of bed and into your lecture seat. I shared with nine other people. I had a great time at fresher’s week, meeting new people, and going out every night to the overly expensive student’s union. Other unions are usually free to get in, but Surrey SU was four pounds entry, and drink was more expensive than home! I joined the mountain walking society, and we went to the Brecon Beacons for a long weekend in October. I joined the fencing club, and got thrashed with a foil twice a week. I also attended two Bujikoryu Budotaijitsu sessions. Drinks, food, clubs, and all the accommodation costs made a crater in my bank account. The course I was on started off quite easy. I could cope with people talking to me about what we were going to do. The problem I had was actually doing it. I liked the geology lectures; all about volcanoes and earthquakes, but I found the fluid mechanics and mathematics a little difficult. It was twice as hard as my maths A level, and that was my weakest A level result. I was coming back from my lectures with my brain scrambled, and trying to figure out the equations myself after classes. I went to all the help sessions, but even after all this, I had not given a second thought about dropping out. Even the words, ‘dropping out’ sounded like something you would do in the toilet. It was after my second attempt at a scholarship interview that I was criticized about my grades, my poem writing ability over my number crunching finesse, and above all, my “abrasive” personality! I was quite upset after this, and combined with my cold I had at the time, I became very ill. The maths got worse, the other civil engineering students were not the kind I wanted to spend too much time with anyway, and I began to question my being on the course. I tried to change course to anything that seemed more interesting and doable. I tried psychology, but they were full, and sociology, but they wouldn’t accept my grades. I knew I couldn’t carry on with civil engineering. I didn’t want to grow up with a tape measure and reflective jacket in the pouring rain measuring a split sewage pipe in Dartmoor. I decided to drop out, so I cancelled my gym pass, Natwest bank account, accommodation, club memberships, and took all my books about concrete back to the shop. It was as much as a headache as the other worries I had combined. My mother took me home from university on Saturday 25th October. I was a student for five weeks. From this day, I had started my gap year…

I was back on the Island, and not too happy about it. The first thing I did was to get insured for the car again. I also knew I had to get my money back together, and what better way than to play the lottery, especially with my knowledge in statistics! I played it for three weeks and didn’t win a peanut, so I went off the idea. After thinking about my grades, and what I was good at, I researched an English Literature course, and thought that I could do a QTS afterwards and become an English teacher. Mum pointed out that you have to read a book a week in a university course like that, and I had passed my exams on just a couple in two years. How could I read one book a week? I struggle to concentrate on books anyway! I went and saw another careers advisor who discussed at length different courses. He didn’t really help, just agreed with everything I said. I finally made up my mind to do something that I would enjoy and would actually be able to do. So I decided to research geography (physical rather than human because human geography at school was boring) as a course, followed by the QTS. While I was on the Island, I chased up my operation appointment for my nose. I had a very large congenital cyst growing on the right hand side and it was dash-darn unsightly. I managed to get lots of appointments, but they were kept moving back. It was a long time before it was sorted. I had to live with my millennium dome for the time being!
I met the Somerfield deputy manager in Newport high street (by complete chance) on the very day I saw the advisor, and asked for my old job back. Go replenishment! So I started work again from 8am to 1pm, and I worked on produce for a few weeks. This left the afternoon free, so I signed up to do an AS course at the college. Martin brought home a prospectus for me, and I chose to do an Environmental Science ‘distance’ course that I could do at my own pace. Dad said it would be worth my while doing with evening classes, but there weren’t any available. This would take me up to the 10th of June when I would do my exam.
With my choices for university not quite defined I strolled on up to school to see my former 6th form head, Dave Thresh. I decided on my courses and universities. One of the courses was not Geography, but a course called “Environmental Hazards and Disaster Management”. I would have taken it up last year, but I thought I’d put it on again just in case. It sounded very a very cool course! Afterwards I spoke with Dave about my new UCAS form. He asked me how things were and where I was working. I told him that I was working in Somerfield, and he frowned; he said he knew I had to do better and suggested that I become a learning support assistant at the school (Cowes High). I was qualified enough because of my voluntary work in upper 6th, I had good grades, and I knew the school like the back of my hand! Sure enough, a few weeks later, Dave phoned to tell me that there was an opening, so I phoned the department head Andy Skillen, who employed me straight away (as a temporary relief worker because the new employee did not turn up for an interview – lucky OR WHAT?!).

So…

I changed my hours at Somerfield to suit the school hours. I changed my hours from 6.30am to 8am, and given the new responsibilities of opening up the store and checking in deliveries. I then went to school and worked a 25-hour week as an LSA. I spoke with Dave again a few weeks later to confirm the UCAS details. He mentioned while I was there that I could take part in ‘Camp America’, a voluntary child counseling position on one of the many American campsites that are available for children over the summer holidays. Flights and accommodation were free, I would pay a little towards the administration fees and visa, and I could spend a month traveling the US afterwards! Something to look forward to! I sent off for a form for an interview. I got in return a lot of paperwork. Paperwork being one of my allergies, amongst cats, horses, and whale sharks.
While this was going on I joined the East Cowes Samba Band, as my brother Martin had already joined I thought I’d tag along to see what it was like. I tried all the drums, but found I loved to bash the chimbas most of all! A friend (who was still at school), Jenny also played the snare drums at the band, and we made an unBEATable team (Yes! First pun!). On Mondays I went with mum to a ‘better driving’ course run by the council; which was an introduction to the IAM and RoSPA, which are standards of driving. The course went on for six weeks. Basically theory, but it did help quite a bit. That’s where I signed up to the IAM institute of advanced motorists. I was now privileged with the right to drive slowly! Mum had also booked a holiday for her and myself to go skiing in Italy, which would be something else to look forward to!
I saw an advert in the County Press for a marching band. I went with Martin to investigate. I planned to make my gap year as interesting as possible by doing as much as possible. I already had 10 years experience with sight reading and playing the organ. I browsed through their selection and chose to learn the cornet. A nice little brass blaster that I quickly got used to. I didn’t play in the band with a cornet, I wasn’t that good, but played the glockenspiel in performances and band rehearsals. The first march I went on I bashed some cymbals in the pouring rain for Remembrance Sunday. We practiced every Sunday, not looking forward however to playing a murdered version of ‘The Great Escape’ five times a night with a squeaky octogenarian stiatopygoutic clarinet player.
Things got a little bit stressful when the Somerfield manager Chocolate Fireguard 2004 told me that there was a man from the DSS coming to job shadow me every morning from 6.30am. Now this man was 50 years old and had severe learning difficulties. His memory span was very short, so things had to be explained VERY carefully and over and over again. Sometimes if I wanted to open up a little earlier and go in to make a coffee or organise a few things before anyone arrived, he would be already outside. He was very difficult to work with and at six o’clock in the morning not the first person I wanted to see! He always turned up at around half five am and waited… So from then on I always opened up dead on time and every time I told him not to come early, he would either forget or ignore me! So he followed me round for an hour and a half every day. I put up with it, although he never stacked properly, could not carry out a routine task, or communicate very well. It was stupid to make a disabled man go on work experience at 6.30 in the morning! The manager wouldn’t move him, and he was made to work the same hours as me! I was now getting up at 6.30, babysitting and unnecessarily fretting at Somerfield, then going straight to Cowes High to work, the work itself was sometimes a challenge in itself. This was not the worst time of my gap year – worse was to come…
The Christmas holidays came around and everybody from university was back on the Island. I met up with a few people at pizza hut one evening. Everyone was laughing and joking about the wonderful time they were having at university. Thanks a lot guys. Anyway, the Christmas holidays mostly consisted of working on my Environmental Science Assignments and burning around the Island with Keith and Luke. We had many adventures in Knight Rider and Destiny, and the broken lampposts, crumbled brick walls, and bits of Knight Rider are scattered all over the Island. Collect them all! I did a few marches with the band, trying to play a cornet in temperatures reaching freezing. I spent Christmas day with my family, and went to work on Boxing Day in Somerfield. Last year I was paid double time and a half, but this year it was just time and a half. Otherwise, it was a rather non-eventful Christmas. I had one week left at Cowes to look forward to before my contract ended, and I didn’t want to work at Somerfield full time.
Before that, we had our New Year’s Eve party at our favourite Public House, the Waterside. A big posh pub restaurant with big leather sofas and a jumpy CD player. Not that we could use the sofas on the 31st of December! It was unbelievably packed! It was the first time I had drunk alcohol since leaving university, and I remember why I stopped! The one photo of me was horrendous – I had never noticed how obvious my cyst had looked. I vowed to destroy it… a New Year’s resolution starting…

2004
…Now.
Everyone thought that they had ‘a feeling that this was going to be a good year’, where I was a little unsure. I returned to work and everyone had gone back to their universities. The last week at Cowes went quickly. I was about to leave the industry forever, when on the LAST DAY, by pure chance, I was told that Osborne Middle School had a statemented child being transferred to them, and they needed a working LSA who lived in East Cowes. So the head teacher of Osborne came up to the Cowes especially to interview me. He told me the story of this boy. He was a real problem at his old school, and had seen seven different LSA’s in 4 years. Colin asked if I could start in a few days, taking into account I had a holiday planned in Italy and would leave early in the summer for America. If I couldn’t then they would have to wait another month to employ a new LSA. So for the first week with him I did some activities based around his interests, and found out his abilities. He could not read or spell AT ALL. This gave rise to his embarrassment and subsequent behavior. After that week I put him in some lessons, and he was not happy about it. It was about now that everything started to become very unpleasant for me. To make things worse, Martin at Somerfield was starting to have a damaging effect on my patience, and I had more paperwork for Camp America. It would still get worse…
Towards the end of January I had my Camp America Interview at Brockenhurst, and got lost in the New Forest along the way. However, I found it and passed the interview very well. I was given more paperwork. I put astronomy down as a preference.
On a Samba band evening, I was given a leaflet advertising a ‘Rake’s Progress’ production for armatures and professionals to come and try. I enquired, tried to get Keith to come (I spent an hour in his shop trying to convince him) but failed, and so eventually went on my own. I rehearsed every Thursday for six weeks. This, while juggling two jobs, a tonne of paperwork, and the continuous aggravation of my cyst was wearing me out. I was ready for the holiday I was about to go on! Coincidentally, my temporary cover for my LSA job was one of the people I met at ‘Rake’s Progress’, the night before. Her name was Anita and she lived in Bembridge as a Primary School helper. It was the most amazing coincidence.
The week’s holiday was fantastic. We stayed at a five star hotel with the best waiter in known history, Giacomo. He was a short fat Italian who was exceptionally funny. The hotel food was absolutely indescribably perfect! The hotel was in the small mountain pass of Passo Del Tonale, at the foot of an enourmous ski slope. The worst part of the holiday was walking up to the ski lifts in ski boots. Ouch. The views were incredible, I started to speak a little Italian to the locals, the skiing was excellent, and I learnt really quickly (even if I did have to sacrifice a few bambinos). Our instructor, Mauro, was really cool. Absolutely spot-on with everything. On one of the days I took a skidoo up to a pub far up in the peak of the mountain. After a hot chocolate (mmmmm – thiiiiick Italian hot choooooooooclolate….!) I sped down the valley at sixty miles per hour as the sun was setting. Now that was exhilarating! No worries for a week! Bliss! On the final day our class had a ski race. I came first and won a gold medal, which now hangs on my light switch.
So… Back to the grindstone. In about mid February I went for my operation to remove my cyst. The music in the surgery was Queen, ‘Under Pressure’, which was very appropriate, thank you very much! I had six stitches and it looked a real sight, with all the blood oozing out of the seams. Yuck. I felt miles better for it, though! A week later I had the stitches out. Just in time for my Rake’s Progress performance. My friend Carla had come back from Australia, and so came with Keith to watch and support my performance. It went really well, and another great gap year experience!
Work with Martin in Somerfield and the ever-increasing suspension of ‘him’ for misbehaving at Osborne reminded me what I was missing in Italy. I finished the driving course and started to go out on Sundays with Chris (my observer) so he could put me in for an IAM test before I left for the states, which I had received confirmation for concerning a guaranteed placement with Camp America!
I had a few months where I worked and worked and worked and didn’t really do much else apart from my music and environmental science. One day I lost my temper with a delivery driver. I was getting very stressed with Martin following me and messing everything up. From then on I made the Martin sweep up outside. It meant I could work in peace and do my job effectively. I felt a lot better for it.
Just before the Easter holidays I was in a concert with the band, which started at ten o’clock at the town hall. I was wearing my band uniform on stage when a policeman came up on stage and started questioning me about my whereabouts a few minutes before. He was quite friendly and said thank you after I said I had been standing on the stage in full band outfit for the past half an hour. It turned out that there were two boys down at Westland’s Aerospace with an air pistol causing mayhem. The police caught one of the kids and he told them that the one who got away was ‘Tony’ from ‘opposite Oak’s Close’, and I am the only Tony/Antony in the area! It was obvious I was framed for a crime I did not commit, especially wearing an Ulster Constabulary uniform. Just the thought of someone going to the effort of getting me into any sort of trouble was sickening. Anyway, everybody came back from university again. I saw more people that I wanted to see, and had a much better time (down the Waterside…!). Keith, Giffy and I went up to the scrap yard and ‘obtained’ an oil sump for Keith’s car, Maroon Marauder. Keith had been working really hard at setting up his own business in computer engineering. He finally got it sorted and Dad hired him straight away to fix our computer. He had to spend about 15 hours trying to fix it, and he did a good job, but it kept breaking anyway.
I filled in more paperwork for Camp America, and went to London over the Easter holidays to get my visa. My orientation meeting was also on the same day, which was convenient! I got through the visa process at the American Embassy surprisingly quickly, and was in and out within two hours, even though my train was delayed by half an hour. A lot of people had to wait for nine hours at the embassy, but I was put into an overflow room, where I got seen immediately. With six hours to kill, I walked along Oxford Street, got lunch, went to London zoo with a student discount, went to Regent’s park, bought a strawberry ice cream, and then went to the orientation meeting at the University of London’s union, where I met some very nice people and had a really good presentation.
I sat out the few remaining weeks working. It had turned out that the manager in his infinite and glorious wisdom did not want to pay me Bank Holiday Monday wages on the day that I worked, but gave it to me as holiday. Little did he know that my normal hours were short, so I received the equivalent of three normal weeks off. I took them before my leaving date (end of May) so the last fortnight of me working at Osborne did not have the pressure of me working at Somerfield beforehand.
I finished at Osborne Middle - Ashley was now a thousand times better behaved than when I first started with him. I finished my Environmental Science revision cards over the half term, and returned to Cowes High for three days to do invigilating. It was dull but I can now say I’ve done more than half the jobs at Cowes, apart from headmaster or actual teacher, you know what I mean. I received confirmation of a placement at America. It was in Pennsylvania, building and launching rockets! Real rockets! They had taken note of my interest in Astronomy. Really real rockets! It was at a Lakeside camp at the foot of the mountains. I finally had it sorted! So I booked a TrekAmerica tour to go down the Atlantic from New York to Miami after it had finished. So it was back to the astronomy revision for me! A week later on the day of my Environmental Science exam I got a letter from TrekAmerica confirming my trip to Alaska! Oh dear! I phoned them straight away and amended it. My name was not Anthony Whitton, I didn’t live on the Isle of White, I wanted my 10% off and I certainly did NOT want to be whisked off to Alaska!
Keith, Luke, and myself went to Robin Hill before my long awaited exam, where I fell in a brook, so I turned up to my exam looking like a tramp. There were only three of us in the entire hall. Me doing my Environmental Science, and two accountant students. Fun. With my exam over, I returned home to pack for America, and awaited closure on my TrekAmerica conundrum.




*** Intermission. Ice creams being served in the lobby ***




On the eve of my departure, everything fell into place and rounded itself up. TrekAmerica rectified their mistakes and I caught the taxi (as the train service was up-the-creek) to Heathrow, where I caught my flight without any of the problems I was paranoid about i.e. visas and JS-2019 forms etc. We landed in JFK International and waited for our coach… for about three hours with all our baggage and coats and jumpers. When we stepped outside it was about 200C hotter than the airport, which came as a big shock. It was difficult to breathe! The air was nearly a liquid! The system of transport was quite messed up. We were taken to New Jersey to stay in a hotel for the night, and then send BACK to New York City to get the bus to Pennsylvania. That cost me $22, and Camp America did not pay for it. I was taken to Camp Timber Tops for training, three days before I had to go to Pine Forest Camp. At Timber Tops I was expecting to be briefed on rocketry, but they only trained tennis and life guarding staff. So the only other people there were… tennis and life guarding staff! So I spent the most boring two days of my life just sitting around with no one to talk to and nowhere to go.
The day finally came when I was whisked off to my target destination: PFC. I was really impressed by the prestige of the camp, even though I was expecting something a little more traditional. It was very upmarket. The front entrance and dining hall were one immense building which looked new, the main road/path wound up the hill with separate facility buildings spaced around the site and several playing fields and tennis courts lay beyond; before the pine tree perimeter. Roads peeling off to the right lead down to girls and boys campuses separately, and continued on down to the enormous mile-wide lake. My area was a squalid room at the back of Hughie Hall in the center of camp above Arts and Crafts. The room was full of gymnasium mattresses, cobwebs and peeling while paint. The windows were dirty and there was no air conditioning – a standard requirement for any room in the US. Apart from my room, the camp was like a luxury resort. And rightly so… the parents paid $7,100 (£4000) to send their children here!
Counsellor camp was another one week orientation where we had ice-breakers, training, specialist area preparation, and hot chocolate chip cookies. Mmmmm. I launched my first rocket, which landed the car park across camp, and made my area look half decent. I made posters, hung up rockets and later bought a boom box for entertainment. On the whole, training was good and reassuring. Especially the talks on protocols concerning tornadoes and flash-floods. I made good friends with the British Counsellors Alex, Sam, Richard, and Patrick. All except Patrick had a bunk assigned. Patrick’s speciality was Overnights, even though like my rockets he had never done camping before! Sam and Alex were in the same division as me, the Senior 8’s, which were 13-14 year olds. My two immediate co-counsellors in Bunk Redwood were Jason Steinburg, an 18 year old who had been to camp for 7 years prior who was our general counsellor, and Taylor, a 20 year old Lifeguard from Georgia who had hair like a typical Californian surfer dude. He even had the Alabama-ish accent just to throw it into sharp relief.
Campers arrived on the 25th of August. In my bunk were George, Jesse, Max and Max, Scott, Nick, Jack, Mitchell, Matt, Steve, Josh, and James. It took a few days to remember their names, and two weeks for their surnames. At bedtime for the kids, the counsellors had a system called O/D. We would take it in turns to be ‘On Duty’ in the bunk; a legal requirement just in case of an accident, for when the kids get ready for bed. So from 10pm until curfew (12.30am) the counsellor on O/D would have to get the kids to shower, brush their teeth, and send them, to bed. That was the theory behind it anyway. If you weren’t on O/D you could go off camp to the pub and, if you were over 21, drink. You could go to the movies, a friend’s house, or just stay on campus and go to the counsellor lounge at the top of the hill to watch TV or use the internet. Everyone hated O/D. The kids usually fell asleep before 12.30am, so 2 in 3 days we were happy.
The food at camp had negative reception by everyone except me. I didn’t care as long as we had a choice and it was free! I always had Lucky Charms substitute for breakfast, and everything else except the fresh watermelons can from the deep freeze. I had the inside knowledge as I was well aquatinted with a Polish kitchen girl, so I knew what to avoid e.g. mashed potato. Every Friday we had services. The camp was primarily Jewish, so we had a Jewish service after chicken and gravy with their special bread that the kids always gutted while waiting to be called up for dinner. Then after services we would all link hands and sing “Taps and Friends”. Taps was the American name for “The Last Post”, and was followed by a cheesy song about all being friends at Pine Forest camp. All sung in a minor key. The kids loved it, which was the important thing.
My first day working in rocketry I had 2 kids. That was it. A few days after no one coming at all, I had a glut of about 13 intermediate girls and a counsellor all wanting to make rockets. In my infinite wisdom I gave them different models and spent the hour among screaming girls asking me ‘is this right?’, ‘can you help me?’, and ‘I don’t understand’. Then a crane fly enters the room. I have never seen a reaction like the one they displayed. It was absolute chaos. After they left I thought it would be a great idea to give them all the same models and take structured classes. And that is what I did, and worked well for the rest of the summer.
My first launch was on the 1st of June and the entire camp came to watch. The first rocket exploded on the launchpad in a billowing whoomph of fire and smoke. The rest didn’t fire at all, except for the final attempt. I was praying for it to work… it wasn’t looking good, a week’s worth of work not, well, working. My prayers were answered and the rocket soared into the sky with a ssssssssswchhhhhhh! The parachute opened and glided gently back to Earth. I was so relived I almost broke down into tears. A lot more kids came to rocketry after that, and because of the rate of production I changed launch days from Thursday to EVERY day!
Independence Day as a Brit in a jeuvenille camp was a dangerous time for me, so I had planned a day off with Pat, Alex, Kate, Christine, and Laura at Lake Wallenpaupack. Then we went bowling, and then to the movies to see Fahrenheit 9/11. It was a good day off - worth a mention. In the DVD of this story you can find it in ‘deleted scenes’. I’m copying my diary and it’s important I don’t forget major entries. Oh, and there is a lot more of the ‘other stuff’ in my diary, but nothing I want to hide. Anything else is in my head. This is a family bedtime story after all.
With all the kids playing lacrosse in the bunk, pranking each other in the shower, and showing no respect to me at all (I wasn’t taken seriously due to my outrageous European accent), rocketry becoming quite stressful, and not getting enough sleep, I finally hit ‘THE WALL’. I was extremely volatile and short tempered, basically all the bad feelings anyone could have. It is at the same time the kids broke a window and wrenched the bunk outer door off of its hinges. A few days later I woke up and felt great! I was over the wall! I still have no idea why. Strange…
On the 17th of July camp had a special day in which specialist counsellors weren’t needed so we all went to New York City. I walked around with Sam, and Jason August, a 22 year old who’s Liberty Jeep I would drive later in the summer, and who did life guarding at the lake. We walked from Central Park to Times Square, Empire State Building, Flat Iron Building, SoHo, Chinatown, Ground Zero and the Battery. It was a long way and took an entire afternoon, but we did quite a lot with the time we had! After that we were back to normal. I spent my days in rocketry, and if no kids came I spent my time in Scrapbooking with the wonderful Christine Curry, or Nature with Rob and Jess where we had a laugh and major league doodling. They were the best times of camp. Practicing the art of scheduled procrastinating. I did participate in the counsellor play, which was a comedy called ‘The Pocono Zone’, kind of a spin off of the Twilight Zone but we were all campers. I played a camper who was in love with a girl; a sort of subplot. I didn’t have much trouble acting. She was pretty hot! She was an intern… only 17 years old. It would only have worked if she were 18. Any girl younger is illegal under US federal law. That, tipping, and taxes were the three things I don’t miss back home.
I made travel plans for after the Trek. I was so looking forward to finishing it was killing me. I was going to work my way back from Florida and go to Savannah (home of Forrest Gump’s bench), Isle of Wight in West Virginia, New York City, and home. I purchased an open return flight. Later Patrick pointed out in my Lonely Planet guide trips to the Bahamas on a sea plane! For $229 (£120) only! I booked a really nice hotel there for one night. I would go straight after my Trek ended and carry on up the coast after 2 days and 1 night on Paradise Island! Now I really had something to look forward to!
Just before the end of camp we had colour days. The camp split up into two teams, blue and gold, and did various activities for three days. Sports, swimming, singing, skits, and general individual points went towards a group effort. This was more or less the climax of camp, and afterwards we all had the touching closing ceremonies that signified the end of camp, and I fired my last rockets. All of them worked… the most successful launch I did.
The day before camp ended, one of my Nature friends, Rob, was sent home by Dave, the boys’ division head, for having a bad leg. It was after a long discussion with Christine and Connie in Arts and Crafts Scrapbooking how much we realised how the camp screws everyone over and doesn’t care about anything but the money. Mickey the camp director earned millions of dollars a year through his other two camps Timber Tops and Owego and his theme park ‘Costa’s’, and although he was energetic and seemed to be always nice, I felt it was quite false. None of us wanted to return to work there, not after what they did to Rob. I also worked out that we were working for 21 cents (12p) an hour.
I gave some awards for rocketry, cleaned out my room, got paid, and left camp with Alex, Sam, and Freddy. Freddy was Spanish and had managed to book a hostel for us in Philadelphia, the nearest notable city to our camp. There wasn’t much there, but we saw plenty of old English buildings, found an English pub, had ourselves a full English breakfast, and watched the Man U v. Chelsea game. That was the Philly highlight, anyway. That and the cheesesteaks. They were okay I suppose… We also ran up the Rocky Steps. Or would have done if it wasn’t fenced off because of some Liberty Day festival or what-not.
We caught the Chinatown Express to New York. This was a bus that went from Chinatown to Chinatown and was very cheap. We booked into the Howard Johnson Hotel, which was right under the Empire State building on Times Square. On the first day the four of us visited the Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, and the Brooklyn Bridge. The next day Freddy and I went to Times Square (really early in the morning because Freddy wanted me to record Times Square on the video camera), got back and found that Sam and Alex had gone. So we took our own self-guided grand tour by ourselves. We went to Grand Central Station, Chrysler Building, New York Library, UN building, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Rockerfeller Centre, SoHo, Chinatown, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Dakota building, and finished up with a nocturnal view from the roof of the Empire State building. It’s good to see the city from there at night, but daytime is better. We did that the next day and you could see a lot more.
Right after Alex, Sam, and Freddy had to go get their flights, I more or less started TrekAmerica after a lot of hostel-hopping. We met up at the Beacon Hotel on 75thst. and left the morning after. The group comprised of 6 Australians and 7 British trekkers, 4 boys and 9 girls. We set up our first camp in Cherry Hill, DC in tents, got to meet everyone and worked out the food kitty, job rota, and travel plans. That night I pranced around Washington DC with a video camera filming the illuminated monuments. I did pretty much the same thing the next day, except the monuments were bathed in the golden rays of sunlight. How poetic!
After 375 miles we reached West Virginia and one of my favorite activities I did… white water rafting!! It was so awesome! No one fell in but we were being thrown around the rapids like a cat in a washing machine. Jeremy was at the front, also next to me in the middle was Leanne, a very nice 21 year old Aussie who had really good photography skills and SLR camera, and Kate and Phil at the back. Phil was completely blind, and was accompanied by Kate who also had a visual impairment. To this day I still do not know how Phil appreciated most of the Trek, as a lot of it was visual. But we all agreed that the white-water rafting was something else! It lasted for 3 hours. We were allowed to get out and swim when we were in the ‘eddies’. We had to get back in the raft before we hit the rapids or we would be in a great big heap of danger!
Another 300 odd miles and we were in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I do like a little hike now and again. I spent most of the time talking to Leanne about my life story, and Jen McCrae about her passion to be an archeologist. I had a joke about a female archeologist. It was a very insulting joke so I had to bite my tongue for fortnight! That night everybody was petrified that the bears would come and tear the campsite apart. Our trek leader Caitlin said that this area was notorious for black bears and really stressed how important it was to keep all the food and rubbish IN THE VAN and even suntan lotion and shampoo can attract them. Still didn’t see any. I wanted to. Caitlin called me Jeremy for the entire summer. She said she was good with names. After that we spent the night in Alabama before heading through Mississippi and Louisiana.
We stayed in the upper right hand corner of the French Quarter of New Orleans. I found it to be a very sinister and shady city in the day, let alone after dark. As soon as you step out into the mid morning air from the hotel your body would break out into an instant sweat, not just any ordinary sweat, but you could feel your clothes sticking to you as if you’ve just clambered out of a swimming pool with your clothes on! It was very uncomfortable. We went clubbing on Bourbon Street, which was THE party place to go to in the world, to a karaoke bar called the ‘Cat’s Meow’ until nearly sunrise! Kate, Phil, Vanessa, Sally and myself also took a Mississippi river paddle-steamer cruise around the battlefield of the Battle of New Orleans. We had a Creole dinner and stopped off at the site and the chalmette monument. Just after we left the departure dock we saw an enourmous oil tanker sail by the other way, and five minutes later it crashed opposite our departure dock. It had apparently lost its steering when we saw it! That was a close shave that nearly killed us all! Whilst in New Orleans we went out of town to the Louisiana Swamps at Honey Island where I had a Gatorade, an alligator hot dog, and a 2½ hour cruise around alligator infested swamps which was an incredible trip. This was before we decided to carry on down the coast. The news showed a particularly strong storm called Hurricane Frances was slowly making its way to the Florida peninsular. We planned to miss out Panama City beach and just carry on for three days in Orlando.
We stayed the night in Panama City beach and left early in the morning, so nothing eventful happened there at all. I asked Leanne if she was interested in coming to the Bahamas with me and was trying to sort that out for most of the way, I would have gone West with her afterwards but I was still unsure. Besides this category 4 hurricane was slowly closing in on the Bahamas. I didn’t know if it was even going to happen. Caitlin was still calling me ‘Jeremy’. Anyhow, Orlando was really cool. We were in little plasterboard and wooden mobile homes for three nights which was a good change from canvas. Orlando seemed a little cooler. It was hot but not stifling. Must have been the wind. We went to Disneyland as part of the cover cost of the trek. It was now obvious how our trek had split up into two. My group were Leanne, Phil, Kate, Jen, Vanessa, and Sally. Steve, Elena, Jacqui, Laura and Rachel were on the other faction. Jeremy wasn’t sure. He kept swapping. Both ‘teams’ had this continuing argument of how to pronounce ‘garage’. We pronounced it correctly, they pronounced it, ‘garidge’. Jeremy didn’t get involved. Anyway, because we had Phil and Kate with us, they knew about guest assistance passes. Each person who is disabled can have up to six guides, and all the names on the pass got straight on the ride without queuing AND front row seats on applicable rides. We had a whale of a time with these! We went on every ride just for the hell of it! We still had some time left over at the end to watch the ‘spectromagic’ night procession that was only once a week. To see the castle lit up and all the floats properly done with all the Disneyland characters and music was so magic it almost moved all of us to tears. Disneyland was the best thing I did in America as far as I’m concerned. Not many people can say, ‘I’ve done Disneyland in a single day!’ Universal Studios was also very good. We couldn’t get guest assistance passes, so we had to join the queue with the ‘common people’. Wasn’t a scratch on Disneyland though!
The day before we were supposed to go to Miami the hurricane was over the Bahamas, chewing it up quite badly and still heading for Florida. The eye was supposed to pass over the campsite we were currently at, I don’t know if there’s anything left of it now, but we were ordered to evacuate completely and head North, out of Frances’ path. I worked out that the hurricane would pass by the time I needed to get my flight to the Bahamas, but I had to travel back from Atlanta, GA, which is where we were evacuated. A few days later the hurricane hit Miami and slowed down to almost a halt. I realised it would take a long time to get back. It took 12 hours in the mass exodus to escape, and returning to Miami would mean travelling back THROUGH the hurricane, which was, ermm, how do you put it…oh yeah…! SUICIDE!!!!! So it was with great disappointment I cancelled my hotel and flight. I was looking forward to it so much, wearing a hula skirt and drinking punch out of a coconut with one of those curly straws… but ‘Acts of God’ etc… It was the sensible thing to do and I don’t regret it. I made an alternative plan to travel West with Leanne and Jeremy (Jezza was 25 so he could rent a car!) and drive along route 40. We would visit Memphis in Tennessee, Oklahoma City, Amarillo in Texas, Albuquerque in New Mexico, Phoenix in Arizona, Las Vegas in Nevada, and San Francisco in California. However I misread one of mum’s emails. I thought it sounded like they wanted me back straight away because of a university application problem or some insignificant but deadly cock up, but there was no problem; I just misinterpreted the email. Anyway I took the Greyhound bus from Atlanta to Newport News, Virginia, to visit the Isle of Wight County. The problem I found was that the bridge from Newport News to the Isle of Wight was over four miles long, stretched a body of water that was the equivalent to the Solent, and was pedestrian prohibited. There were no boats, taxi’s or busses to take me over, so I saw it from a distance and that was it. I took the Amtrak back to New York City where I stayed in the Chelsea Star hotel (in a room dedicated to Saturday Night Fever with a completely back bathroom with black fittings, black toilet and shower… so when you switch the light on not a lot changes!) and spent the remaining three days around Times Square. Then I flew home.
The last week of my gap year was basically rounding everything up, resetting my internal body clock to UK time, and seeing everyone before I went to Kingston University to study my Disaster Management. I came back from America looking completely different to when I left; no one recognised me with my new beard and sticking-up-blonde-dyed hair. I received the result of my Environmental Science. I got a C, which was good for a self taught A level in 5 months!
I don’t think I would do Camp America again. I think it was a once in a lifetime experience, and certainly my gap year has taught me a lot. I took on responsibilities I had not imagined I would have had to have a year ago.
And so I packed my bags, loaded the car with my life, and started my student life again… but this time I was a lot confident, smarter and wiser. And you know what? I wouldn’t have changed a single thing.