Third draft, criticism would be appreciated Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hi all, this is the third draft of my PS. I'm just hoping it's better than the first two, haha. Any constructive criticism would be heavily appreciated. Thanks!

My job was to play “dad” for the day. As a summer day camp counselor for a group of roughly fifteen ten to twelve year old boys, I came to realize the weight of this responsibility as the summer progressed. Many of the boys in this group, called the Orange group, came from broken homes. One boy’s dad was going to jail, another boy kept going in and out of foster homes, and another boy had a mom who was addicted to drugs. These boys looked to me to provide them with a safe place where they could have fun and act like the kids they were. The Orange group simply needed help and I was ready to be the one that provided it.

Leading the Orange group to bond together as a team was one of the most effective ways I could help this group. The Orange group, like many other social groups, created a hierarchy of sorts, thus giving some boys more social power over others. This resulted in bullying. Obviously, this was not conducive to the environment I wished to create in this group. To combat this, I established some team building games. In these games, the boys often had to work together for a common goal. This allowed them to communicate and to come together once they reached that goal. I also set up football games with the teams organized so that the boys with more social power ended up on the same team as the boys with less social power. Once these boys remembered the joys of football while they chest-bumped and high-fived one another, I knew that I had finally created a team atmosphere. To cement this team, I bought the Orange group orange bandanas, which the boys wore everyday to summer day camp as a source of pride. By the end of summer, not only did the boys give me a big hug when they said goodbye, but also gave each other melancholy goodbyes as well.

The Orange group was not a growing experience just for the boys, but for me as well. I am someone who is fortunate to have two loving parents and no financial difficulties whatsoever. The community that I was around when I was a camp counselor was not one I was used to. I learned this firsthand when one of my campers talked with me for about an hour about how his dad was going to jail and how this event had been catalyst for disunity in his family. As a camp counselor, all I could do was listen to his story, believe him, and try to encourage him the best that I could. However, I wanted to do more. His story was heartbreaking to me and several of the other campers had their own stories that were just as sad. My summer spent as a camp counselor opened my eyes as to the amount of families that must be going through similar struggles. These families need help and once again, I am ready to step in and help them.

I have discovered that becoming a lawyer is the best avenue for me to accomplish my goal of helping families such as the ones in the Orange group. As a lawyer, I will be able to merge my academic skills that I have worked hard to develop over my four years of college as an economics major with the counseling skills I gained as a camp counselor. Lawyers are not just able to form strong arguments and come up with creative solutions to complicated problems, but they are also required to care for their clients and believe in their clients’ stories. These clients who are in need of help often have no other place to turn to and lawyers have a heavy weight of responsibility on their shoulders to help their clients. I will be able to carry this weight because of the passion I gained over this summer with the Orange group.