I had an eventful summer that year, I went on that dive trip, went to
UASC, Freedom Academy, and took a trip to Florida all in three
months. We got the diving all squared away so we move now onto the
UASC. UASC, or the Utah Association of Student Councils, was a summer
camp for student councils to train our mind and direct us into,
'Having The Best Year Ever!' There are some really cool and
charismatic kids around the state and almost all of them came
together at the Snow college campus out in the middle of the boonies.
As a loner type iconoclast I was not one who had spent a lot of time
at organized activities preferring generally to limit my activities
to a small group of friends or just a girl. I think the reason I
liked it better that way was that I like to get things done, I get up
early, I like to get right after any activity and bite off life in
big meaty chunks. Most people I knew were slow-goers, sleeper-inners,
homework-prioritizers, they would not want to go where I was going or
at the speed I wanted to go so I reasoned that the pleasure I got
from their company would be less than what I could get going my own
way. That was not the case at UASC, the kids were amazingly talented,
smart, funny, friendly and really good at lots of things. It was
amazing for the first time in my life to be surround by self
confident go-getters I was so used to cajoling everyone to do
something a little adventurous but these guys and girls were the gas
not the breaks. Everything from check in to group assignments to
seating, and eating ran so preternaturally smooth with only well
behaved and intelligent kids. After the first day there I was just
stunned about how much better everything was with the right people.
After we were gender segregated and assigned to the abandoned dorms
we all met up in a general hall to be assigned to workign groups for
the week. Every group only had one kid from each school in it and
with about thirty high schools represented we had about an average
class-size worth of kids, all strangers. It sounds like a recipe for
disaster but within minutes of getting together as a group the kids
had self directed and organized a plan of action to complete the
first days tasks. Not in a bossy or officious way but in the manner
of a group that wants to do things the best way and has the
intelligence to recognize a good plan and to go with it. I had never
seen anything so beautiful in all my life and I have never since.
