Astrocamp

Exactly a month ago today, I got in the car and headed west – something I’ve been meaning to do since graduation. I had always envisioned myself heading out to Oregon or to somewhere in Montana, but a job at Astrocamp brought me instead much farther south to the mountains east of LA, to a teeny town called Idyllwild, CA. I don’t know if the past year had just sapped away some of my zing for adventure, or if it’s just hard to enjoy a new job when I still don’t get the sense that it’s building or leading me toward something, but for one reason or another, making the jump proved to be much harder than I was expecting.

I got a lot of things I hoped for; I’m way busier than I was at the State and I have way more empowering, intimidating responsibility. I finally feel like I am in the same state of common sense reality as my boss, and my boss’s boss, and even most of my co-workers. I also wanted to be so busy that I didn’t have time to constantly wonder what I was doing or where I was going next or to ask whether or not I was happy. My schedule is packed; I teach from 9am-9pm for 6-9 days in a row and then have a 1.5-2.5 day break, depending on what days my weekend happens to fall upon. For now I think it’s a good thing, but I am pretty sure it will be the schedule that eventually drives me away; there is simply no time to exist outside of camp.

I got a lot of things I did not expect; 40-ft high ropes course activities which have tested the very limits of my self control, scorpion checks in my shoes every morning, and air so dry and thin that my body feels cracked and exhausted most of the time. There is a challenge here every day. Some days it’s a battle between logic and instinctual fear, convincing myself to climb a 40-ft pole to leap off into open air. Sometimes it’s learning to rebound after a failed experiment, or asserting myself with the right balance of humor and firmness in response to hurtful humor. I can feel that I’ve grown, being here. It’s fun to be this assertive, and this bold and brave, when I sure as hell wasn’t in college. My skin thickened this past year, and it feels pretty good.

I also can’t say I was really expecting the gang of kids that showed up with me for training, or, even more so, the batch that returned once training was over. They are goofy, smart, game to try things and interested in shaping the world around them; generally a very nice gang of folks. That said, their humor can be astonishingly vulgar and offensive, but they have taken some criticism well and I think as we feel each other out, most of that will settle into something more comfortable. It’s rather a lot like being back in college in some ways. There’s always something going on: Monday nights we have colloquiums. Tuesday nights we have craft nights, where I am learning to make rope rugs and bracelets while others knit and crochet, do madlibs, origami, or just drink bourbon. Wednesday is $1.25 fish taco night in town, Thursday is indoor soccer in the gym, and Friday is karaoke. A crew of them spend a lot of time on astro-photography, many are climbers and musicians, and there is no shortage or anyone to watch sports games with. While it’s great to have such a small radius of life, where I can walk everywhere and my food is all taken care of, it is weird being back in an isolated, drinking-oriented social scene.

It is a really, really cool set of things that I get to teach. I am learning a TON since I haven’t seen many of these physics problems since about 9^th grade, and I am the only one here without a degree in physics or astronomy. I also have just about the coolest set of toys you could ever ask for to try and get kids jazzed up about science. In our Atmosphere and Gases class alone, I get to make dry ice cannons, blow up marshmallows in a vacuum, play with liquid nitrogen, and ignite hydrogen balloons in balls of flame. In lights and lasers, I teach kids about the human eye by having them put on inversion goggles (which turn the whole world upside down) and attack each other with pool noodles (one of the funniest things you will ever see). We have a giant phosphorescent wall where kids can experiment with which color light gives the most energy, then pose and make dramatic shadows against the wall as their friends flash a bright bulb at them. The camp is focused on creating “discrepant events,” those moments when you learn or see something so friggin’ cool that it ignites a lifelong interest in science, if not a career in physics or astronomy.

Overall, I think it’s gonna be a great respite, here, and I’m hoping to learn a lot.

My very first day of work here reminded me of my very first project at the consulting firm in Vermont; it moved swiftly from being a real drag into something so bad it was purely comical. Both my classes that day were outside on the ropes course, and it hailed. Like, torrential downpour-style hail. In the morning it was only freezing rain, but by the time buses were rolling into the parking lot around noon, the mountain was submerged in a big bank of fog and the rain was alternating between fat droplets and hard bebe-sized ice bits. A troop of 4^th graders lugged their bags under the cover of a porch stoop and gathered up in the Star Gallery for their intro-to-Astrocamp lecture. I tried not to cringe visibly when my group gathered around me at the front of the room; not a one of them was well dressed for the weather. They’re from LA, and “cold” to them means 55 degrees while wet means the crazy people who go surfing and swimming in the ocean on warm days. They were dressed for our first adventure on the ropes course in Uggs, cotton sweatshirts, and, best case scenario, synthetic puffy jackets.

I put on a super cheery face and led them through the hail out to the ropes barn, where our tech, Eric, had set up our Skycoaster harnesses in the barn for us to learn to put them on. Usually one group harnesses up inside the barn and the other groups harness up outside, on tarps, but because of the weather, Tina’s group, riding the zipline that morning, was squeezed into the barn with us in a separate circle. We shuffled into our half of the barn and, with much pushing and prodding, got the kiddos lined up each behind a harness. We have a great system for leading groups through putting on harnesses, but with the hail pounding on the tin roof overhead and the two groups crammed into the little space, Tina and I couldn’t hear ourselves shout, much less be audible to the kids. Absurdity reigned: the harnesses were absolute enigmas to the kids, who, after being shown each step, still managed to put them on inside out, upside down, or even in one case, both at the same time. The ponchos we gave the kids made finding the straps extremely difficult, and even if they could find them, the straps were too swollen and wet for small fingers to pull them tight, so Eric and I ended up personally tightening just about every single harness strap in the circle about three times. Their puffy jackets made them much larger than your normal 4^th grader, so we had to swap out several of the 4^th-grader-sized harnesses for larger ones halfway through the operation. All in all, it took us about 45 friggin minutes to put on 14 harnesses.

Personally, I would never start a group this young out on the Skycoaster. Weather aside, the Skycoaster is a scary thing; it involves getting hoisted by your classmates and these crazy instructors 40 ft up into the air and then pulling a cord to let yourself swing. Lemme tell ya, it is UP there, and you freefall a few feet before your harness catches you and you realize you’re not falling to your death. I let out a scream that I didn’t know I had in me, the first time I rode the skycoaster. Plenty of kids never make it to the top of the Skycoaster anyways, and more than a few get frozen up at the top of it, unable to make themselves pull the cord that will release them into the swing.

Now, we just met about an hour ago; at this point, these poor little kiddos don’t know me from Adam. They’re wet and cold and strapped into some confounding mess of nylon, and this crazy woman is bouncing around in front of them saying, “Alright now here’s the fun part! We’re just gonna haul you up there and let you swing, and not only will you NOT fall to your death, I promise it’s gonna be super fun!” Yeah, right, ya lunatic.

So finally we start hoisting them up the line, and despite the miserable weather, they loved the ride. One by one the kids got cold or their hands got sore or dirty, and the weight on my end of the rope got heavier and heavier. Fourth graders aren’t very big, but they’re also not very strong. I am forever indebted, on my first skycoaster, to a troop of random 8^th graders were happened to be standing close enough after riding the zipline for me to recruit them to help pull the last few kids up the line.

Best of all, I didn’t kill any kids! They all lived to jabber happily about the ride and whine about the cold and wet and yank their harnesses off in a messy heap, they were so anxious to get to the hot chocolate waiting for them in the dining hall. Happy day :)

Our second class was also scheduled to be outside, but we crammed inside our Star Gallery with not one…not two…but THREE other groups to stay out of the misery. Initiatives is supposed to be our team-building, get-to-know-you class, but with 60 kids in one room it was all but impossible to hear their names, and the best we could do in the team building department was group vs group tug of war. The kids still had fun, but it was utter, utter chaos.

We went back to our house and giggled rather hysterically about the absurdity of the first day, and despite my terror at messing up some experiment and maiming some child, the rest of the week went smoothly. In fact, a whole lot more smoothly than I was expecting. I definitely sense a challenge in learning to run all of these classes and engage kids, but I’m curious, now, seeing how smoothly this week ran, to see how long the challenge lasts.

One last story, to close out my introduction to Astrocamp. In my group this last week was one super, super timid little girl, who was both my most obnoxious and most rewarding student. Now it’s completely understandable to not want to ride the skycoaster, or even the zipline, but she also struggled with the nighthike, was scared to put on the inversion goggles, and was scared that we might actually be about to launch up to Mars when we put on climbing harnesses to climb in our gym. She was mostly adorable, but gods…that whine…

Anyway, the last experiment we do in Atmosphere and Gases is to take three balloons and test them for floatability and flamability to see which is He, which is N, and which is H. This little girl, of course, happened to grab balloon number 3. Balloon number Hydrogen. Balloon number flameball. Awesome, I thought to myself. I’m either about to empower or totally petrify this little girl forever. I seriously considered having her switch balloons with her classmate, but I didn’t want to doubt her, and I didn’t want to give away the experiment result. So I let her keep it and braced myself for a scream and tears as she held out the balloon on a long metal stick, so heavy she could barely keep it from dragging on the ground.

As I knew it would, the balloon ignited in a giant ball of flame, and all the kids yelped and then shrieked with excitement while my timid friend skittered backward across the room, eyes huge. Then a slow, tentative little surprised smile spread across her face as she said quietly, “whoa.” Phew!

I meant to, but I didn’t tell ‘em they were my first class at Astrocamp. I can’t quite imagine this over and over for the next 5 months!

The Economics of Personal Competition

The economics discipline more or less started because people were interested in studying the competition between different firms that produced the same (or similar) products and that area of study (called Industrial Organization, or IO, if anyone else wants to sound like a dork) is still one of the major fields of study. It seems surprising then, that the idea of competition between people has received very little attention from economists. As many/most of you know, I did my senior honors thesis on the topic at Colby, and because my interest wasn’t satiated in the subject after that, I’m now in the process of trying to come up with a theory and experiments to study the phenomenon more closely here. I thought I’d post about what I’m focusing on, what I think is interesting about it, and where I’m having a problem formalizing my research project. I will fully admit a selfish motive for posting about it; you guys are some of the smartest people I know and I want to hear what you think about it.

The base intuition that Igor (who I played beer die with in the econ department yesterday) and I are starting with is the concept that people enjoy winning over and above the monetary value they get from winning. This, by itself, does not have too many implications for the way people behave, although there still are some interesting effects. What makes our model a little different is twofold: one, they not only like winning, but they dislike losing; two, the intensity of this feeling increasing with the amount of effort you put into the competition. These two aspects of the model combine to have some interesting theoretical implications (i.e. predictions about human behavior), which I’ll mention briefly.

First, it means that making something a competition will not cause everyone increase the amount of effort they exert. On the contrary, some people will actually decrease the amount of effort they put in. The reason for this is because of our assumption that the cost of losing is increasing in the amount of effort you exert; you never like to lose, but you really don’t like to lose after you try hard. This assumption means that anyone who either really hates to lose or who expects to lose going in to the contest will just “give up.” They decide not to put in effort in order to minimize the pain of that loss. By doing so, however, they guarantee themselves the loss even though, had they put in more effort, they had a chance to win. Thus, the effect on average effort of framing something as a competition is ambiguous, but the framing will cause the variance of how much effort people put in to increase.

The second implication is that it means small initial differences in talent matter a lot. The reasoning behind this is similar to the previous paragraph. If Michael is slightly more likely to beat me in die the first time we play, I’m not going to put in any effort (in order to minimize the pain of losing to him, which was probably going to happen), and thus get shut out. Damn. Roughly, this is true even if the initial difference in talent is really, really small and I was going to win almost half of the time anyway. As you can imagine, this would intensify over time and make small initial differences have a large effect.

This has pretty huge implications. Imagine, for example, two kindergarteners (call them Isaac and Michael) who are identical in every way during school. Then, over summer, Michael’s parents read to him a few times and work on a couple math problems. All of a sudden first grade comes and Michael is a little better than Isaac at reading and math; if the tests are framed as a competition, that means that Michael beats Isaac a few times. So what are the two kids responses: Michael is winning so starts working a little harder (because it feels good to work hard and win) and Isaac stops working (because it feels bad to work hard and lose). This increases the talent difference and by the time they’re 18, Michael is off going to school at the best college in the country (Stanford) and Isaac is selling crack on a street corner at going to UC-Berkeley. Naturally, this scenario only works under some assumptions in the model (namely about the size of the joy of winning versus the pain of losing), but is an interesting case that I think does happen at times.

The last implication is a slightly more subtle one. It means that often the people who win competitions are the ones who really, really want to win. At first this seems both obvious and probably good, but (when taken literally) the model predicts that those in high-level positions that required a competition to get (think CEOs, politicians, professional athletes, econ Ph.Ds, etc.) are not necessarily the best people for the job. Instead they’re the people who like to win the most, which makes efficiency theories even more questionable.

What I’ve just described is a very stripped down and less math-y version of my paper last term. Now the plan is to try to move past formulated and the simple economic model toward testing whether the implications of the model are indeed accurate. Unfortunately, that has proven to be quite difficult. There are a few reasons why it has ended up being difficult.

The biggest problem is that we’re dealing with a bit of a “fuzzy” concept when looking at competition. Will people want to win a hypothetical contest? Can different people view the same thing differently, in regards to whether it’s a competition or not? Even defining “winning” can be difficult in some cases, for example how would you feel if you were expected to lose by 10 and only lost by 5? These issues make it much more difficult to define a change in “competitive frame,” or “degree of competition.” To be able to see how people respond to making something competitive, we need an (exogenous/random) change in how much a contest is viewed as a competition. Unfortunately, this rarely happens, is tough to quantify, and might depend on the person. Even then, it is still tough to interpret an individual’s response; in particular, it’s tough to separate out joy of winning/cost of losing from risk aversion or fairness concerns.

The second big problem is in the nature of the predictions from the model. Most of them are “quantitative” instead of directional. In other words, they are mostly something like “the competitive frame makes small differences in ability result in larger differences in outcomes because of differences in effort provision,” which is difficult to test because “larger” is tough to define and study.

Another problem that we’re running into has to do with the nature of economics and what I think its use is. In short, I don’t think economics is meant to ex post rationalize things and I don’t think that this ex post rationalizing has much use. What I mean by ex post rationalizing is the following. Say I’m looking through papers and I see experiment Y, which gives result X and the researchers gave an explanation of Z. I could, instead, think that the result X of the experiment Y has a different explanation: if you define “winning” right, the joy of winning/cost of losing explains it perfectly. But if the explanation Z and the explanation joy of winning/cost of losing do not have any different implications (in terms of what would happen in varying “what if” scenarios), are they really different theories at all? Also, even more importantly, I want to be able to look at experiment Y and predict that X will happen before I see the result. This notion of using mathematical models to predict what will happen in varying contexts and after policy changes is really what economics is all about. As a side note, it’s also why you need to put some structure on the model, “tie your hands” a bit when defining winning, and make some assumptions (that most likely aren’t fully true)… in other words, it’s what economists get bashed for doing.

I’ll tell you all how we’re thinking about testing our theory with both lab experiments and possible real world data in a future post. I’m not doing it now for three reasons. One, I have a presentation on another project on Monday and need to start working on that. Two, we don’t have a fully formed plan of how we’re going to do it yet, just the rough idea. And three… uh… um… well … The EPA? Oops. Ok, the actual third reason is that I want all of your opinion, given that you are some of the smartest people I know. How do you think I should test this? I’ve found that I’m always more creative before I hear how someone else is approaching the problem. So before contaminating your creativity with my ideas, what are yours?

Mama Leone's Chicken Soup

One of the ideas that prompted me to want to blog with all of you was to actually get more recipes. Not only would this allow me to think of you all while working in the kitchen, but would certainly diversify my appetite. I tend to get into ruts with my cooking when I should be broadening my horizon!

Anyways, my friend Noah brought this soup to class one day in the Fall term and I could smell it from the other side of the building. I have a terrible sense of smell. It was that good! I made it once last Fall, and I made it again on Friday with my friend Barbara. It was quite delicious the second time too.

I present: Mama Leone's Chicken Soup
(P.S. Props to Jess posting twice in two days! It made me want to do more!)

Makes 15 cups

1/2 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts

2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus extra for chicken breasts (divided)

1/2 teaspoon black pepper, plus extra for chicken breasts (divided)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 tablespoons butter

1 medium onion, diced

3 stalks celery, diced

1 tablespoon minced garlic

1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

2 teaspoons sweet Hungarian paprika

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

8 cups chicken broth

1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes in juice

3/4 cup whipping cream

2 cups thinly sliced fresh spinach

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Season chicken breasts with salt and black pepper to taste and place on a baking sheet. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool. When cool enough to handle, dice the meat and set aside until needed.

While the chicken breasts are baking, heat the oil in a large stockpot over medium heat. Add the butter and melt. Saute the onions and celery until the onions are translucent, about 6 to 7 minutes. Add the garlic, tarragon, oregano, paprika and remaining 2 teaspoons salt and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper. Cook, stirring, for 3 or 4 minutes. Add the flour and stir until well-combined. Slowly whisk in the chicken broth and bring to a boil. Add the tomatoes and cream. 
(I added about a half of a can tomato paste to give it more color)
. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the reserved chicken breast and simmer 10 minutes more. Just before serving, stir in the spinach.

two posts in two days

I would REALLY recommend taking a full 7 or 10 minutes to read this, and possibly pass on. Regardless of political affiliation, I think it's important:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/15/andrew-sullivan-how-obama-s-long-game-will-outsmart-his-critics.html

real life

I put in my notice at The Empire this past week.

My official last day is Jan 27th.

I will be flying to D.C. the night of January 30th in an attempt to join rebel forces.

Here's to a new year and some excellent new adventures.

Miss you all



also:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/were-eating-less-meat-why/

Episode V: The Brothers Schwartz Strike Back, Part 2

Happy New Years everyone! Gather around for Part 2 of our saga, where the evil Darth Vader (aka my boss) is trying to destroy the Rebel Alliance on the ice planet, Hoth…

Sometime early during the spring semester of senior year, I got a call from the person that was going to be my boss for the upcoming summer. As I mentioned in the previous post, the two youth camps at the lake (Redwood and Tulequoia) were going to merge under the control of one youth camp. The person who ran Redwood, who was a role model for me as I grew up at Sequoia Lake, was going to take over Family Camp operation, and my new boss, S (I’ll be nice and leave her name anonymous), was going to take over Youth Camp operation. I had no previous interactions with S, so I tried to remain as neutral as possible during her call. It was one of the more awkward interviews that I have ever had—I don’t believe she ever explicitly said that it was going to be a job interview. But we talked about camp, about my experiences at the lake, what we thought camp was going to look like. But she never really came off as being completely sincere and she didn’t seem to have a purpose for our conversation… She said that she thought she would have a position for me, but she never really mentioned what it could be. It seemed likely I would be a “unit leader” over the summer, which entailed supervising counselors and their cabins, leading that group of counselors on activities and an overnight hike, and making sure that the camp program ran smoothly. This was a position that I held the previous summer. While I was happy and grateful that it seemed like I might get the same position, there was always an ambition to try to climb the ranks a bit more while my time at the lake was likely drawing to a close (this was a pre-Oregon decision, however, so I didn’t know that my life would soon be consumed with grad school. I digress).

There were a couple of other close camp friends/family members that I knew would also succeed if they were placed in leadership and counselor roles. My friends, Cali and Pebbles, deserved to be on the directing staff: Cali had been a unit leader with me the previous summer at Redwood (and had spent more time at the lake that I had) and Pebbles was older than I am but had (somewhat unfairly) not advanced being a counselor (which was something that she deserved as well, cause she was amazing at all camp-related activities). Additionally, there were other friends that had served as counselors the previous summer at Redwood that deserved to remain counselors as well. Nachooo!, Swatch, Bat, Smalls, Redcorn, and Elmo had performed wonderfully. Additionally, my brother (Beamer) was finally at the age where he could become a counselor (have to be 18), something that he had looked forward to for more than a few years. With all of this potential, I was under the impression that we would have good representation at youth camp, which at this point in time was supposed to be both at TQ and Redwood*.

*I am realizing that I forgot this part of the story—everyone was under the impression that there was going to be two youth camps, TQ and Redwood! Everything was going to be under the umbrella control of S and TQ…

And initially it seemed like the leadership positions were going according to my idea of what it should look like. Over Spring Break, Cali and Pebbles were asked to go on a planning retreat with the presumptive TQ staff to talk about what ideas of camp would look like for the upcoming summer. People had filled out and submitted applications; the general consensus was that everybody was excited for summer.

But there some troubling signs. I got a call from Pebbles and Cali, who were frustrated with how the retreat had gone. TQ and Redwood had different ideas of what camp should look like, and that had caused some ripples for Pebbles and Cali, who felt that their ideas or beliefs weren’t valued or accepted. TQ, for instance, had a strong foundation within a feminist/equality sort of approach, where kids were not to be singled out at all, competition was seen as harmful rather than helpful for developing an individual’s growth, etc. I’m not saying these aren’t bad, it’s just that I don’t agree with them fully. Competition, and learning how to win as well as lose gracefully, are critical skills in life. Without experiencing failure, how are children supposed to deal with it when there are greater challenges and later failures to be had later in life (a different post for a different time)? Cali and Pebbles felt the same way I do towards these ideas. But rather than acknowledging these things in a collaborative, productive manner, Cali and Pebbles felt their ideas were disregarded. It didn’t help that some of the TQ staff did not seem to reach out to either of them as well. Our way of camp, it seemed to Cali and Pebbles, had no place at the lake.

After I got the call from Cali and Pebbles, everything kind of snowballed. Well qualified counselors, such as Nachooo! and Swatch were not being given an interview. Pebbles and Cali were not given clear positions for what they were going to be doing for the summer. Over the Memorial Day weekend, a traditional “opening” weekend at Sequoia Lake, where volunteers come to help set up the five camps at the lake (e.g. clean out cabins, sweep, remove debris from trails, set up dining halls, etc.), the Redwood volunteers had not been contacted and only TQ was opened. (This was particularly egregious, as it only involved simple calls from S to pre-determined Redwood volunteers to tell them to come up over the weekend—looking back on this, we should have seen bad things coming).

And then the hammer fell. 10 days before camp Cali called me. S had fired Cali before camp even started, claiming there would not be enough enrollment for two camps over the summer. Additionally, this meant that Redwood was not going to be opened at all over the summer. A quick call to Pebbles also verified that she did not have a position over the summer as well. Talking with Cali, it was clear that there was to be very little representation on the TQ staff: myself, my brother, and Elmo, a female counselor. Bat, a friend who I have a high opinion of, left her counselor position at TQ because she felt betrayed by S. Like Bat, the remainder of our friends were contacting Evan for work at Family Camp, even if it meant cleaning toilets and doing maintenance work. Our friends, some of whom depend on the lake for an income as summer employment, were scrambling, panicked, and hurt. Evan apparently was pissed, as his co-worker was dumping some of the most loyal and true individuals without giving a second thought about it. And Redwood, our home for the previous summer, was being cast off as the black sheep of the lake.

I felt hurt and betrayed as well, much as my camp family was feeling. Any of the old prejudices about TQ that I had tried to bury as a way to this new transition at the lake, were re-appearing. I didn’t know the people at TQ, but I knew that I hated this woman. I consider myself loyal, and this backstabbing made me angry at everything that she was going to stand for, despite only talking to her once. I actually ended up calling her to verify that I still had a position, even though I had received an offer sheet. My brother, too, had been given an offer sheet. Needless to say, my brother and I were distrustful. S said that we had jobs at the lake if we wanted them and that she wanted to have us participate at the lake. She also said that she was sad that she had to end things with Cali and Pebbles and any others that may have been depending on a position. I told her that I was unsure of whether or not I wanted to be up at the lake, and that if I were to work at Sequoia Lake that I was leaning towards working with Evan (if that was going to be possible, because he was helping everybody else who had been screwed to find a job).

But everyone that I talked with said that should at least give camp a shot, especially my dad and Evan. Dad made the point that the lake is still the lake and kids are still kids—they still need to have an awesome time at the lake. Evan was encouraging as well, but he did say that he could talk to his bosses to see if anything could be made available to me. I still needed to show up to the lake though, and that I may as well go to the leadership staff training. I decided to go—I needed to do something for the summer and I still loved Sequoia Lake as well. But I resolved with my brother that we were going to do our best to represent.

At this point I should mention that youth camp staff in the past have been vocally, subtly subversive of people that we don’t like or don’t appear to have our backs. Back in the day, family and youth camp were led by an abomination named Steve. Steve seemed to give all of his attention to family camp and seemed to mess everything up at youth camp (changing everything, working under the notion that he knew best, when in fact he didn’t have any youth camp experience—he also was screwing family camp, we just didn’t know it). Anyways, the youth camp staff at the time named their subversive operation “Friends For Christ,” with the codename as “Fuck Family Camp.” Everyone decorated clothing apparel with “F.F.C.” and talked about their excitement for Friends For Christ.

Colin and I decided that we weren’t going to take’s S’s injustices sitting down that summer. S couldn’t screw us or are friends and get away with it. With these frustrations, we developed Operation Fuck Shit Up, aka F.S.U. or Florida State University, and Operation S’s a Vagina, aka SAV, later renamed to Save a Bear when S figured out what SAV meant. Colin and I were going to kick some ass and have a summer-long battle against S. I just had to make it through staff training for my reinforcement (read: Colin) to arrive.