Camp Stuy: The Sleepaway Camp No One Asked For

I woke up to the sound of a phone alarm blasting over the loudspeakers at 5:30 a.m. I was groggy and tired after staying up late for what Mr. Grossman called “sleep schedule training.” It was ironic because I never had a sleep schedule to begin with. As my fellow pre-freshies and I awoke, we threw on as many layers of clothing as possible and hurried out the door. The Arctic was freezing, just like Stuyvesant. It was going to be just another awful day at “Camp Stuy.”

I’m sure Camp Stuy used to be an enjoyable place where you got to meet friends, learn about your new schedule, and explore the school. But all of this ended with the disaster of the class of 2023. With groups of kids leaving the school every five minutes to warm up, it was decided that Camp Stuy would be moved to the Arctic to “over-prepare” students for the working conditions faced at the school. That’s how I ended up spending a week sleeping on blocks of ice and warming myself by fires made out of Spectator newspapers. It’s not like anyone reads them anyway.

Our first activity of the day started a mere 10 minutes after we got up. With heavy backpacks hanging on our backs, we practiced sprints for when we were about to miss our trains. It seemed rather pointless for me since I lived within walking distance of Stuy, but I was in no mood to be yelled at by Mr. Grossman. After our sprint practice, we speed-read flash cards for our morning math quiz. It was the placement exam for geometry, but my mother wouldn’t accept anything below honors. After our quiz, we headed to the freezing cold lake for our swim test. I hurriedly got in and swam across the width of the lake, occasionally glancing at the bored expressions on the lifeguards’ faces. After getting the thumbs-up of approval from Mr. Moran, I exited the lake, gave a fake smile to the seniors from the swim teams, and ran back to the locker room.

I didn’t have time to relax in the shower though. We only had five minutes to dry off and get ready, so I threw on my thermal underwear and clothes before being hurried to take my ID picture. After being barked at to stand in line in an “orderly fashion,” I waited somewhat impatiently for about an hour. Once it was finally my turn, I sat down in the uncomfortable desk chair and smiled. The camera flashed bright in my face and I tried not to squint. Little did I know that my desperate attempts to not look like Sasquatch would be irrelevant. My ID card picture, like everyone else’s, made me look like Frosty the Snowman with bad botox.

After receiving my ID card and lying to myself that the picture wasn’t THAT bad, we headed to our ID swipe session. With the entrance “scanner” people standing by, shouting orders and correcting our swipes, I sat in the cold and used my newly made ID to do practice swipes as if I were entering the building. I could feel my feet growing cold and my phone screen was slowly freezing over as I held up my health screening. After what felt like an hour, but was actually only 15 minutes, we were sent off to lunch in the cafeteria. My fellow pre-freshies and I raced off through the snow in hopes of finding the least messy table.

Once my friends and I had thrown all of our backpacks on the available chairs, we stood in line to get school lunch. The school lunch ladies stared menacingly at our plates, their eyes beckoning toward the fruit and daring us not to get one. Even though the apples were missing their skin and some were glowing iridescent blue, it was always made clear that we were expected to take them along with the rest of our stale pizza and chunky milk. The trick was to sneak the apples into the trash. This was a challenge in itself; while the lunch ladies could be distracted, the environmental club couldn’t. They stood by all the exits and trash cans, hoping we would ask them about recycling and composting.

After barely making it out of the lunchroom alive, I quickly got back in line with the rest of the homeroom as our Big Sibs led us through a tour of the building. Since we were in an igloo in the middle of the Arctic, there wasn’t much to see other than pictures of our soon-to-be high school. After an hour of yawns from Big Sibs and pre-freshies alike, we headed to a small computer that we all huddled around for a Zoom meeting with the principal, Dr. Seung Yu. While he explained our exciting new classes, schedules, and community, all of us groaned in complaint and jealousy at the sunshine streaming through Dr. Yu’s windows and his ability to wear a t-shirt.

As the sun began to set at just 4:30 in the afternoon, I reflected on my days at Camp Stuy. They surely weren’t enjoyable, and the mayor had even threatened to shut down the camp after parents complained about students returning home without toes or fingers. But nevertheless, I knew I had to persevere to the end of the week. I was so jealous of Brooklyn Tech’s orientation program in the Bahamas.