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David @ Design Talk's avatar

I went to a summer camp starting when I was 10, was a camper for a few summers, then did 2 different leadership programs when I was 15 and 16, and then worked as a counsellor for 3 summers when I was 17-19, leading kids on trips into the wild. Reading this article, I realised what a rite of passage the leadership programs - especially the first one - were. When we were campers, the counsellors did the navigation and made the decisions and were otherwise in charge, but during the leadership programs we had 2 “leaders of the day” who were responsible for navigation, planning breaks and otherwise making decisions; the counsellors of the leadership programs were there for safety and to veto bad decisions, but otherwise were hands off. It was a real change from being a camper, and we made lots of mistakes, but we learned from them.

The camp was a community: if you attended a few years in a row, you could see campers become leadership participants and eventually, counsellors. You were curious and excited/nervous to go through the process yourself. For years, I knew how much these experiences had helped me grow as a person and a leader, but this is the first time I’ve considered how it made me grow as a member of a community. Thank you!

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Bob's avatar

If you are looking for a 'singular event,' obtaining a driver's license used to be the modern rite. A smartphone probably should be it nowadays, but it isn't treated as such by a large proportion of society and I think that is probably part of the problem.

Also, this skews younger. Consider: you can never do heroin legally, can't legally drink until you are 21 (past adulthood), can't sign off on legal documents until 18, can't drive until 15/16, can't get a google account until 13... but you can get a smartphone whenever. I suppose in a world where the internet is regulated, a smartphone is not as dangerous as the other things on that list... but in an open internet world, I agree it is arguably the most dangerous of all.

The above paragraph argues that 'rite of passage' is outdated and 'journey of passage' is more accurate, but expanding on that point takes a much longer post.

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