In camp lingo, they’re called CAs, which is short for Counselor Assistant in regular speak.  Having spent the past several years as campers, the CA summer is a transitional year for many of the participants, who take on a challenging but exciting role at Camp Starlight that, for many of them, is also their first job.  Most of them are entering their Junior or Senior year of high school, which means that college is on the mind too.  With the Camp Starlight CAs at an age where they’re facing so many rites of passage, the camp focuses on designing a program every summer that incorporates aspects that make it a worthwhile, enjoyable experience that equips CAs with valuable knowledge and experience that they can apply to their lives as they move into adulthood.

Throughout the summer, the CAs participate in the Apprentice program, an ongoing competitive activity in which they work withAllison Miller to conceive, design, and create projects to better Camp Starlight.  Because the CAs are in a transitional phase from campers to staff, they have the opportunity to apply what they’ve learned as both campers and staff members, which is, no doubt, why they are able to come up with so many great ideas.  The Apprentice isn’t just about ideas, though.  It’s about follow through, which at the end of the day is the crux of being a great staff member at Camp Starlight.

The CAs also get a taste of being a counselor, as they’re assigned to Lower Camp bunks with which they participate in many activities.  Being a part of a bunk also provides CAs with their first taste of what it means to be a mentor.  Young campers look up to their CA leaders as someone who was once a camper who was their age too.  By demonstrating that they love camp so much that they choose to return as CAs, the CAs impress upon younger campers the value of the camp experience.

But the CA summer is not all about work.  CAs are campers too, and the CA summer includes an amazing trip.  The Camp Starlight CAs recently returned from a ten day California adventure that they unanimously agree is the highlight of the CA summer.  In fact, for many of the CAs, it’s the culmination of their camp career, an experience for which they’ve been waiting since they were young campers.  To finally get to enjoy such an amazing trip with fellow campers whom they’ve had several years to bond is quite literally the experience of a lifetime, they say.

The CAs also get some academic encouragement in the form of college tours.  Throughout the summer, they visit several universities such as UCLA, Stanford, Cornell, Syracuse, and SUNY Binghamton to get a feel for college life.  Although the tours are not intended, necessarily, to promote the specific universities the CAs visit, they do give the CAs the opportunity to walk college campuses of different size, location, and academic or athletic specializations, and to be able to start thinking about the type of college they want to attend as well as the campus size, location, and extracurricular activities offered that may be the best fit for them.

With so many opportunities throughout the summer to experience the best of both worlds, it’s no wonder that so many Camp Starlight CAs rate their CA year as one of their best!