“My feet are killing me!”, I exclaimed, “We only practiced for like 3 hours, this sucks.” “It’s not that bad”, responded Isaac. “You don’t get to say that”, I countered, “You get to sit all day.” “At least we're not marching”, said Dan. “I would prefer to march, then we would at least move our feet”, I responded, “We’re gonna be doing this all week!”

I woke up on Tuesday morning at Western Michigan University to quite a strange sound, it was a high pitched “Shaw!” over and over, I knew what it was but I didn’t know where it was coming from. I opened my eyes and realized that Isaac was holding his phone up to my ear replaying the same sound over and over again. The sound was from our favorite video game, Hollow Knight, so It became a bit of an inside joke. I was sweating a bit due to the lack of air conditioning, luckily I brought a box fan so it wasn’t that bad. “Man, am I hungry?”, I declared, “How long till breakfast?” “We leave in about 10 minutes”, confirmed Isaac.

Long story short, breakfast was awful. There was barely anything to eat, what there was to eat was bad and stale, and they ran out of milk. This is how it went for the rest of the week.

“Now to stand and play music for what, 5 hours straight?” I asked rhetorically, “I already can’t wait till lunch.” We then got all of our instruments out of the trailer. I was so thankful that Dan and Isaac joined the marching band with me because I knew almost no one else in the front ensemble. One of the saving graces of the situation was that I was directly next to Isaac, he was drum set and I was the top vibraphone. After we got done setting everything up Paige and Jake arrived, they are our instructors and they’re pretty chill. We began practicing, which included doing the same things over and over again, until lunch at around 1, I believe. It's been a while since band camp happened so my timestamps might be a bit off.

At lunch the three of us went and found a table and then got food, the entire thing was all you can eat for the most part, it wasn’t like a buffet but you could get as much as you wanted. It was almost like a mall food court with tiny little restaurants. I got pizza because you can never go wrong when it comes to pizza, except for pineapples, they make it soggy. We met back up at our table and talked about how camp had gone so far. “The only good thing about rehearsal is the breaks”, I stated. They both nodded in agreement. It would be so much worse without the canopies”, added Dan. “I got a sunburn engraved on my chest just because I wore a v-neck the other day, it looks like I have a Dorito on me, we would be dying if we didn’t have canopies”, I said in agreement, “Not to mention the sun reflecting directly into our eyes.” “Man, I just realized school is coming up really soon. We’re gonna be highschoolers in a few weeks”, I said in disbelief. Lunch was over in what felt like 2 minutes, but had actually been around 30 minutes”

We then practiced just the same, had dinner, and went to the dorms.

When we got into the dorms I went straight to the bed because i couldn't bear to stand any longer, it felt like my feet had been flattened like when you leave silly putty sitting out all day. I shared a room with Dan and our room was connected to Isaac’s. Isaac was rooming with Lucas, who was also part of the front ensemble as well as the reason why I wasn’t a marimba. He had broken his arm a few weeks earlier and we ended up not having enough vibraphones because he could only use one arm. I was demoted back to vibraphone and no longer a marimba my first year of marching band.

As we got ready to go to bed we all had to take showers, the problem was that we all had to use the same shower and some people like to take longer showers than others. I decided that I would go last and Isaac decided to go first. Although there wasn’t much conflict, It still took about 30 minutes for everyone to finish which ended up going past “lights out”. Lights out really just meant that you can’t leave your room, you can go to the room connected but not into the hallway. After I finished showering I went straight to bed.

Wednesday started out just like Tuesday, waking up, eating breakfast, and going to practice, but after we got done with our first practice time things became a bit more interesting. We went to lunch and, like the day before, I got pizza because it was made fresh, in a brick oven, and oh so delicious. After about 10 minutes I realized that I had eaten 4 slices of pizza. “You think I could eat a whole pizza during lunch”, I asked my friends. “No way”, said Dan. “You should try it”, said Isaac. I went up for a 5th slice, finished it, a 6th slice, finished it. At this point I felt like I was gonna throw up, but I am one of the most stubborn people you will ever meet, for example, later in the year Paige said that we weren't going to talk until I caught a mallet behind my back because I said that I hadn’t missed it and wouldn’t try again in fear of messing up my streak, I never did it again and while everyone else started talking again I didn’t talk until rehearsal was over, this shows you just how committed I am. 7th slice, done, last but surely not least I was onto the 8th and final slice, I thought I was going to have to start over, if you catch my drift, but I pushed through and ate it. It was pretty insane and I had decided that every single year from then on I would eat an entire pizza in one sitting at band camp.

Later as we were practicing Paige decided to give us a “nap break” while Jake went and talked to the battery techs. The break lasted about 30 minutes and a lot ended up happening in that time. At first I hung out with Isaac and Evan, Evan is someone who I’ve met before but never actually known, we became friends during the 18 hours or so that we spent together. We went in the trailer and just talked about stuff. When we came out we noticed that everyone, including Paige, was lying on the pavement of the parking lot talking to each other. We didn’t lay down but we listened and soon heard the most iconic question of the whole season. Justine, our section leader, proposed the question, “If the trailer fell on us do you think that Jake would gain mom strength and lift it off of us?” Apparently when children are in danger or trapped mothers will sometimes get such an intense adrenaline rush that they are able to lift a lot of wait in order to save their children, they then go into a short coma due to the exhaustion. When Jake returned we proposed the question to him and he said, “I Would probably lift it up and then go into a coma for a week.” Band camp allowed for allowed for a lot of bonding as well as some very funny breaks.

On Thursday nothing special happened, we ate breakfast, practiced, ate lunch, practiced, ate dinner, and went to bed. We had some breaks but nothing memorable happened during them.

On Friday everything was mostly the same until the end of the day where we had a party with snow-cones, music, dancing, and just a bunch of fun stuff. I hung out with my friends as well as my brother until it was really late. By the time I went inside I was exhausted and went straight to bed after taking a shower.

On Saturday we went back to the school in order to perform for our parents and others and it went quite well. Once all was said and done I realized just how much fun I had and I was already anticipating next year's band camp. It just goes to show that when you do something you have to commit and follow through with it. I can't wait for band camp to come again.