Friday Favorites (monday edition)

The first rule for someone who works with youth is that you’re not supposed to have favorites. But let’s be honest, there’s always a favorite. Since my job is youth programming, I get to hang out with some really fun and silly young people. Out of all them, I have to say Tara (see left) is my favorite. Tara joined the Youth Service League (which is the summer program I run) 4 summers ago, the first summer I worked for PRT. She’s now a junior at Northwestern and this year joined the Rock Hill Youth Council so luckily I get to see her a lot. This weekend, Tara came along on our annual YSL retreat with 32 middle schoolers as a "junior chaperone." Some high school kids have maturity issues and don’t really know how to handle certain situations or know how to be in charge. But this was no problem for her. She was telling girls to go to bed, to get over themselves, to clean their cabin, and she was MVP of capture the flag. She’s pretty mature for her age overall, and just so much fun to be around. I love kids who are overly positive about life and can always find the good in situations and laugh about things. That is totally her and I can learn a lot from youth like that. Thankfully I have a couple more years to hang out and be silly with her, we’re really good at that. And I mean look at her. She’s precious.