Back with another post. I’m going to Hawaii soon so I’ll probably write something about that too.

Day 1:

This was the opening day. I went to swimming practice right before check-in, so that was fun. The opening ceremony was pretty chill. I decoded the group colors and figured out what group I was in before the big reveal, so that was really funny. I was with Grace Jaeger-Sandruck(I know her sister decently well because she was on my swim team recently), which I was really excited about. I was also with Ben Petrella, who was really chill. I had Handiccraft and serenaz26 in my group, which was really fun. We had dinner, then did some activities. There was a stuffed animal named Hughie, whom we would win in specific challenges. I was on Team Indigo(the colors were named after colors in the rainbow) and the first thing that happened was a scavenger hunt. Grace hosted one of the stations, so she wouldn’t be running with us for the majority of the challenge. Instead, Ben would be running with us. We would get a clue for a location on the NC State campus and then do a teambuilding challenge once we got there. Once we completed the challenge, we would get another clue. Being the youngest group there(the camp was for high-schoolers), we had the most energy and ended up winning the scavenger hunt and Hughie. Next up was trivia. We lost miserably and gave Hughie to the blue team, who was our rival(in a joking sense because they were the next youngest group). Lastly, we had a tower building challenge, which orange won(they’re the oldest, made up of all rising seniors). My roommate, Josh, and I went back to our dorms and chilled there for a while. I was playing Geometry Dash on my phone and Josh was with a group of friends that he had. This was the only day we didn’t have a nightly activity, so we just chilled in our rooms. I slept for 2.5 hours that night. It was bad.

Day 2:

After breakfast, all 50 of us kids went on a bus and went to the low-ropes course at Schenck Forest. The activities were all pretty fun, but we had to do a reflection after EVERY SINGLE ACTIVITY, which made them really boring. We were all super tired after all the activities when we climbed back onto the bus. Lunch was decent and we had some instructional time after lunch. We were supposed to learn the different types of leadership, but we were all really tired and flamed Ben for “bad instructions,” which we apologized later for. We did different challenges and Ben directed us in different ways. After that, we learned about the different types of leadership from how Ben had directed them and talked about what we thought was the best, easiest, what we used the most, and what we wanted to learn how to do. We also set our personal goals. After that was dinner and our nightly activity. We tye-dyed shirts and played games. I played frisbee with Prateek, whom I know from Elementary School. I slept decently that night, getting 6 hours of sleep. Josh stayed up till 12 with seniors in the hallway talking about random stuff, which I didn’t engage in.

Day 3:

We had the high-ropes course today. We headed onto the bus with team blue and went back to Schneck Forest. We had three activities: The Ladder, Telephone Pole Jump, and The Course. I did all three, which was really fun. The Ladder was this really tall ladder that had a 5-foot interval between, increasing the higher you get. It was also really scary because it kept on shaking. As you progressed higher, it got more tiring. I was one of the three people who got to the top out of the 10 people in my group. It was super physically exhausting and it got really hard near the top because I’m short so I had to do some really sketchy stuff at the top. I guess the scariest thing for me was I thought that if I fell, then I would fall all the way down, even though there was a belay team below me. It was pretty mentally challenging as well, but I enjoyed it. Next up was the Telephone Pole Jump, where you climbed up onto a shaky telephone pole and jumped onto a trapeze bar. I was really hesitant to do this but ended up agreeing to do it in the end. We ended up pressuring Grace to do the jump, which basically forced Ben to do it as well. Most people just slid off the pole, but I actually jumped. It was really adrenaline-rushing. Lastly was The Course. This was like an actual ropes course, but we could only do two sections. One was a Burma Bridge, and another was like a climbing wall made out of ropes. I did both, obviously, and they weren’t that scary after the two previous challenges I had just done.

When we got back, we discussed what challenged us, how we overcame it, etc. We had lunch and whatnot and had some instructional time blah blah blah. We had dinner and then our nightly activity, which was Ice Cream and Ice Breakers. I ended up playing soccer with Prateek and others came and went. Everyone kept on saying that I looked like I played soccer. It’s probably because I play with a soccer ball at home in my house whenever I’m bored. The icebreakers were really dumb and confusing and I wasn’t allowed to write down the names on my phone to remember them, which was even dumber. I got another 6 hours of sleep, and all but Prateek and I congregated onto what we now called the “Third Floor Nightly Activity,” because we’d do something dumb every night. That night, we slid on rolly chairs down the hallway and crashed into the wall and whatever. It was kind of annoying because I was trying to game and I would hear a random crash and laughter every 10 seconds. I also posted happy bday to Grace at 12 am because she finally turned 18 and stuff and that was really big.

Day 4:

In the morning, we yelled Happy Birthday to Grace as she came out of Turlington. It was Diversity Day today. We talked a lot about diversity and got really deep about it. It was pretty fun and our instructor for the day was really nice and chill. After lunch, we had more instructional time blah blah blah. Dinner wasn’t bad and our nightly activity was just congregating outside of Turlington(where we lived) and having some fun. We had a freeze dance competition and I did pretty well because my reflexes are insane because of the geometry dash grind. When we got to the final 2 people(me and a girl named Addyson), we had a dance-off. It was basically me clowning myself super hard for a minute. Addyson had a mental breakdown because everyone crowded around the two of us and whatever and thus I won the competition(and Hughie) by default. According to many, I got “famous” because of the activity and whatever. That night, I don’t remember what the Third Floor Nightly Activity was(I think it may have been talking about the guys’ girlfriends and whatever). We also had a celebration in the afternoon for Grace’s birthday, which consisted of the staff and only the Indigo team. I ended up playing the piano because the staff struggled a bit trying to figure out how to play Happy Birthday on the piano.

Day 5:
During breakfast, some dumbarse from Yellow stole Hughie from Shauna(who was OK in the beginning and then got really annoying in the end) because Shauna let go of Hughie while texint her dad. I was super mad about that because I just absolutely clowned myself the night before and she just let go of Hughie to text her father and whatever. We didn’t do much this day, though. We had a lot of fun and did some random BS in the morning. After lunch, we had instructional time blah blah blah. By this point, we were split up into two “groups” of friends. One was 7 of us who all became really good friends, and the other was my roommate and another guy and a girl, who associated with a lot of other people from other groups.

The nightly activity was stationed activities in the gym. The first activity was Spikeball, which was weird but fun, and I enjoyed it. The next activity was Knock Out(basketball). I clapped literally everyone because I’ve played basketball for a while. It was a little weird adjusting to the height of the hoop(the height of the hoop in my front yard is 9 feet), but it was pretty fun. After that was shooting footballs into buckets, which was hard and we ended up rage quitting. Lastly was hungry hippos irl. My team won but it was pretty weird and stuff. The organizers of the event called for a team relay thing, which was the egg and a spoon activity, a three-legged potato sack thing, and then carrying someone on a scooter. Lastly, we had to do the hula hoop thing where you have to get it around everyone without breaking the connection of the circle. We ended up winning by doing some slightly questionable activity but we ended up winning Hughie back again lol(we had Hughie for the longest duration). I also used serenaz26’s phone and called her tennis partner, pretending to be a scammer from Bank of America. The tennis partner started telling a friend how serenaz26 had gotten hacked and stuff before realizing that serenaz26 had texted her that it was a joke and I had called her.

Day 6:
This was our last full day and we had a long instructional period and whatever. The Nightly Activity was the dance, which was hosted by Indigo and Blue. It was the one day we were forced to collaborate, but we worked it out. We created a 4.5-hour playlist, but my roommate and his friends decided to play their own music(which was almost all rap) because they had been assigned as DJs. Grace’s sister asked me to dance with her(I think it was more of jokingly mocking me or whatever) because I “knew how to dance”(I don’t) and I politely rejected them before going right back to playing Geometry Dash. The Third Floor Nightly Activity was playing soccer with a basketball, which was a bad idea when we accidentally shattered a whiteboard. We obviously had to come up with an excuse because we would be cooked if we told them we hit it with a basketball, so we said that my roommate and his friend(who actually shattered it) were racing, and then my roommate’s friend tripped and hit the whiteboard. Also, some kid got sent home because he took cheek pics of a girl. The girl literally didn’t care(she’s taken anyway) and called him “cute and sweet.”

Day 7:

Last day! In the morning, some other kids on my floor decided it'd be funny to break the plastic board on top of the glass(that was only thing keeping from the shattered glass from falling) so that a massive chunk of glass fell from the board. We then claimed that the glass had "shattered" and it was a natural cause(that's funny). Handiccraft also made everyone sing happy birthday to me because it was my birthday and we were in charge of the Morning Energizer(which was where you made everyone do something to wake them up). I was Team Leader this day, so I was in charge of the team, along with Handiccraft. We had a lot of reflection and the counselors checked in on our personal goals. I met mine and whatever. I started to miss my group because apart from three others, I’d probably never see them until next year, assuming they decided to come the next year. I “graduated” and said goodbye. I’m already missing Shelton even though it’s only been 2 days, but I won’t miss the insomniacs who made me sleep at 12(ok maybe I will) but Shelton was a great camp. I definitely got addicted to Replay by Iyaz(SHAWTYS LIKE A MELODY IN MY HEAD) and the community was really nice.