Summer Camp Prep and Painting a Room

The hardest part in painting a room is the prep work. Prep includes all the things I dread so much in painting – taking down pictures and then patching the walls, taping the trim, moving and covering the furniture, and finally cutting in all the edges with a brush. Only after the preps competed do you get to use the roller. And using the roller is fun because you get a lot done in a short period. But the prep, on the other hand, is just plain hard and tedious work.

A friend who farms for a living reminded me of this fact recently. We were both sharing how busy our springs are as we prepare for our big summer seasons. He said that he always felt that farming was like painting a room, spring was the prep and summer was the rolling of the paint.

It’s also describes of our work at SpringHill. Starting around April 1 we’re kicking it into high gear doing our final prep for the summer. I always tell people that spring prep is busier, more stressful and more pressure filled than actually running of summer camp – if we do a good job of prepping. And that’s a key “if”. Because to have a smooth summer, like painting, requires doing a great job in prep. The better the prep, the easier and better the painting, the better the spring, the smoother and better summer camp will be.

So the SpringHill staff is in the middle of prepping – hiring our last staff, filling our last camp spots, making sure our property, facilities and equipment is ready, finalizing training, and completing our programs and curriculum. But when the preps done, we’ll get to paint, that is, we’ll get to provide life transforming experiences to over 20,000 campers, and that makes all the prep worth it.