By: Emery R.
As a high
school senior, this will sadly be my last article for the Lime Green Giraffe.
So, I decided to make a list of the top ten things I learned and things I did
(as you can probably guess by the title) in Girl Scouts as my final farewell.
10. Your
sit-upon will come in loads of handy. I made mine when I was in fifth grade,
and I still use it today. Having it has literally saved my butt from the cold,
hard metal bleachers at track meets and the fire ant infested ground at cross
country races.
9. Selling
cookies does a lot for you. Not only does it teach you the value of
perseverance and charisma but it also develops your entrepreneurial skills and
acts as a real-life application for the basics of economics. As someone who
sold more than 500 boxes for 4 years in a row, I feel like I understand supply
and demand better than anyone in my class.
8. The
pilgrimage to the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace. My patrol had an amazing time.
We went on the Savannah ghost tour, visited Ms. Low’s childhood home and had
dinner at Casbah, an awesome Moroccan restaurant. It was a terrific bonding
experience for all of us, especially after we almost got kicked out of our
hotel for “being too rowdy.” To this day, we still maintain that the person who
called management was being unreasonable. ;)
7. The
mother-daughter pajama night. Our patrol leaders designed this event as a way
to talk to us about puberty. It was kind of awkward in a fun way, since we were
watching videos about tampons filmed by our troop’s Girl Scout Cadettes, but
looking back on it, I think it was actually very sweet.
6. Cookie
decorating! Every year around Christmas, my patrol would have a cookie
decoration day, during which we would frost gingerbread cookies with incredibly
elaborate (and sometimes cavity-inducing) patterns.
5. How to
fundraise. My patrol was fairly creative. We would rent a booth at the open air
farmers market that opened in our neighborhood park every Sunday and each of us
would bring a craft or a baked good that we’d put a lot of time and effort into
making. These were no lumpy pinch pots; these, my friends, were products. And we marketed well. Even the
toughest couldn’t resist our earnest voices.
4. Having
friendships that go beyond school is really important. These are the people
that you can rely upon more than you ever imagined.
3. The
Mountain Jubilee. Father-daughter campouts were fantastic for me. My dad and I
went every year for about 5 years consecutively and I had a blast each time. We
always participated in some of the camp activities but we also incorporated
some of our own “arts and crafts,” such as knife-making. Yep. We did that,
along with 15 of our closest camping buddies. And then we named them.
2. Girls
thrive in girls-only spaces. It is healthy and empowering to have a place and a
time when you are free from the rules and expectations imposed upon your gender
by patriarchal society. Simple.
1. The
definition of feminism. I wouldn’t be myself without knowing this word.
Learning it was my first real awakening to any kind of current injustice in the
world. I wouldn’t say that I was a totally ignorant third grader but learning
that I too was on the short end of something made inequality all the more real
to me. That meeting, my leaders didn’t just give me a history lesson; they gave
me a cause.
I hope that
everyone who reads this will take at least one thing away from what What I Learned and What I Did in Girl Scouts.
Farewell,
LGG readers, and good luck.
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