Final Final.


I was so nervous. I didn’t think I was going to be able to speak, which is moderately important when one is giving a speech. In reality, nothing bad was going to happen if my speech turned out to be awful, but I was in the oldest unit, and all the younger girls looked up to us. No matter what I said they would have thought something like “OMG that was amazing”. But I still wanted what I said to be perfect.


Final Final was such a big deal and not just to me, but to everyone at the camp. It was the final closing campfire during the final session of camp, so it is literally the final campfire of the entire summer. The Pioneers was the name of the oldest unit. At camp campers were separated by age with the youngest girls being in cabins and the older girls beeing in units. As the campers got older, their units were farther away from the main lodge and less sheltered from the weather, the units changed from resembling a cabin, to being a large, wood-enforced tent. The Pioneers were the girls that knew the most about camp, and they wanted everyone to love it as much as they did. Final final is the perfect opportunity for the Pioneers to explain why they love camp, and it has always been tradition for the Pioneers to make it as amazing to everyone else as they can. With the ceremony being as impressive as it is, that isn’t very difficult. It begins by the whole camp walking down to Waterfront on a long dirt road that wraps around the whole camp. Right before they reach the Waterfront, they see the Pioneer girls holding handmade wooden torches, and those were about 5 ft tall, and 20 lbs each. As the campers walked by the Pioneers would turn and walk alongside them until everybody reached the wooden benches that surrounded the bonfire. There the Pioneers either put their torches into the fire, or they lit the wooden decoration in the water. After that, everyone sat down, with the oldest girls sitting on the smaller log circle around the bonfire. And then, the speeches began.


Each Pioneer gave a speech, and each girls speech was about 2 pages, written out. The Pioneers had to deal with every possible emotion someone could feel while they were giving their speech. Everyone was so happy to be at camp, so sad to leave, terrified to never see your friends again, and so exhausted from everything else. Nerves were the worst. Each of us had a massive fear of messing up our speech, because these speeches represented that girls entire camp experience, which is a massive amount to write about. If you spoke too quickly then you risked sounding like a chipmunk, but if you talked too quietly, no one would be able to hear a word that you spent so much time into writing. As we recited our speeches, those that weren’t speaking were glancing at each other through the smoke of the fire. We all had the same look on our faces, it wasn’t a positive look, but the fact that we all matched gave us a feeling of understanding between one another. Everyone reacted differently to their emotions that night. Some girls started bawling the second they started speaking, others were stronger but at the end of the night we all had tears in our eyes. The moon was shining and the stars were out, earlier it had looked as if it might rain, but it had cleared up, the stars reflecting off the water. The twinkling stars matched our eyes as we accepted the reality that it was our last night as campers.


The two weeks leading up to this campfire was as stressful as getting a concussion three weeks before finals. In the last few days before Final Campfire, each girl was getting on average 4 hours of sleep. We were all grumpy and getting each others nerves constantly. Whenever we had a moment to rest, we were expected to be writing our speeches. Personally, I am not a speech person, I would rather use my actions as well as informal joking to show how I feel about something, instead of writing about it. I have the type of personality that leans more towards a “do now think later” mindset, so it was incredibly difficult to attempt the opposite. It also didn’t help that everyone seemed to write their speeches with ease. Every word that I wrote out, I instantly despised and wanted to rephrase it. I could even complain to my fellow campmates because none of them had a similar problem. A few days before the ceremony I tried to chat with my friend Lizzie about it. That conversation went like this, “These speeches are going to kill me.”
“Why?”, Lizzie honestly looked confused by this.
“Because speeches are so hard to write. I’ve barely written a half of a page. I can never think of anything good enough to say” I was so whiny.
“Oh. Well I finished mine the day we got back from north, It is really simple. Once I got started, I just thought of all the right words to say”,
“Well then.” I just walked away, I was only jokingly mad, Lizzie knew I was kidding and she thought it was funny, but there was a sense of disconnection between us. We had two different ways of thinking and hers allowed her to write speeches. Mine did not.


I was running out of time.

The final campfire was in two days and I still hadn’t finished my speech. My counselors were getting irritated with me because they needed to look it over before we spoke. I was starting to freak out. For me this means I lose weight. Which is not a good thing if you’re already underweight. It is common for people to overeat when they feel stressed or nervous. I’m the exact opposite. When I get stressed out, I can’t eat. I guess you could say I’m a “nervous starver” as opposed to a “nervous eater”. But it’s not a good thing when the person who usually eats the most at every meal can barely finish her first helping. Losing weight only caused me more stress, and the cycle repeated itself. The day before final campfire, I sat down and did nothing but write my entire speech. Well I had the majority of it already written out, but I completely rewrote a good majority of it. I was terrified because Bridgets, a fellow camper in my unit, speech was two pages, front and back. My own paper barely filled the front and back of one page. I hoped that my speech was the shortest. That would have been mortifying. I wanted to rewrite my speech again, but my counselors wouldn’t let me. I accepted that my speech was final.


There were 18 total people in my unit. 15 campers and three counselors. We each had a speech to give. My speech was given in the middle of these 18. I was so grateful for that. If I had to go first or last I probably would have spontaneously combusted. I remember standing up when I started to speak. I looked at the other girls in my unit. The majority had tears in their eyes, either from their emotions, or from the smoke (which meant emotions). I’m not an outwardly emotional person, so I was not crying, but I was still sad. I gave my speech, I made sure to speak slowly in order to make my speech last as long as everyone elses. Right before I spoke all of my nervousness and anxiety rushed to at once, and then I forgot about it and read my speech. While I was speaking my nerves minorly resurfaced, but the content behind my speech overpowered the emotions, and I managed to keep my cool throughout the speech. Afterwards I was told by so many people that they loved my speech and it embarrassed me. But I wasn’t embarrassed by their compliments, I was embarrassed by the fact that I had previously thought that my speech was the worst.


I still get incredibly nervous whenever I have to speak in front of a large group of people, that hasn’t changed. By giving the speech at camp I learned that people will enjoy what you say if what you say is thoughtful and heartfelt. When I was contemplating rewriting my entire speech, I was only thinking of doing that because I thought it would be more pleasing to others, I’m glad my counselor made me keep it the way it was, if she hadn’t, my speech probably would have been terrible.