A camper stood in front of me holding a boat made of cardboard, pipe-cleaners, and popsicle sticks, explaining with total seriousness why it deserved a motor. If the pitch was good enough, I’d hand over a sticker, and the sticker unlocked the next tier of materials. So he pitched. And when the first version didn’t quite land, he went back, reworked it, and pitched again. He was only going into 6th grade, yet he already knew how to talk to an investor.
That was the magic of Make Waves, and moments like it were most of my summer.
I spent this June as a Leadership Intern at Camp Invention at Rancho Sienna Elementary School, Liberty Hill ISD. Out of the 4 color groups of “big kids” (Gold, Silver, Purple, Black), I led the Gold group, which included 20+ kids heading into 6th grade, alongside my co-intern Ishaan. I served as a Leadership Intern for Make Waves, the module that covered all 80-plus “big kids” (4-6th grade) as they rotated through. Camp ran June 8th–11th, with 200-plus campers total moving between four activity stations a day.
Make Waves is a surf-themed STEM and entrepreneurship module, and that’s where I picked up the name, Mr. Surf. Of course, I went by Kartik, but as a special thing for the kids, I’d dress up in Hawaiian shirts and go by “Mr. Surf”, which the kids sometimes misheard for “Mr. Sir”. Through interactive activities and presenting challenging twists with our teacher, Mrs. Hair, kids in Make Waves learned about buoyancy and physics by designing boats, then learned pitching and product design by turning those boats into “billboard boats” as they market like real inventors.
My favorite part to run was the Investor system. Each kid had access to the counter of general materials, including paper and cardboard, however they had the chance to pitch me their design to earn stickers, and the number of stickers they’d earned determined which materials they could access to continue to build their project: Level 1 was materials like foil and felt, Level 2 added blocks and corks, Level 3 unlocked color, decor, and the toy motors everyone wanted. I played the investor: listening to pitches, helping with ideation, encouraging them to innovate more by pushing kids to take their ideas to a higher potential, and watching them refine and come back sharper.
The rest of the job was less glamorous and just as real. My mornings started at 7:30 as I arrived early with the other camp staff, making name tags with car numbers for the kids, the LITs (Leaders in Training), and our teacher, Mrs. Hair. As the kids started to walk in around 7:45, I’d personally greet each one and hand them their name tag. Finally, once we were ready with everyone present, I’d lead the Gold group to class.
From there, it was setting up for the day’s success: filling testing pools, arranging all materials, for example, foil, blocks, corks, motors, all laid out ready for the campers to use just as Mrs. Hair had finished parts of her lesson and was ready to move on to the interactive work. Once we were finished at one station, the groups would transition to the next. I helped in managing transitions for the other groups through lunch and recess, and guiding four Leaders in Training through each rotation. Dismissal was its own operation: from day two on, I was assigned to run the display screen myself, scrolling through car numbers just as they popped up so teachers and staff could see whose parents had arrived, making sure every kid in camp got matched to the right ride, lost “pink tag” campers included.
One day, visiting school board members toured the classrooms, and I walked them through the students’ projects and progress myself. Our camp director, Mrs. Holt, commended me for it publicly during our end-of-day staff huddle, a good moment, and one I didn’t expect.
At the end, we received 40 volunteering hours, certificates, letters of recommendation, and a thank you from the USPTO. But the part that stuck with me wasn’t the recognition. It was the teaching. Managing 20-plus kids and actually getting them to focus is hectic, hard work! I have a new respect for teachers who do it every day. And it’s worth it. Watching a kid learn something, build something, and light up when it works could turn my whole day around, and so could making one of them laugh. The ideas these kids came up with, as well as their innocent kindness, genuinely wowed me. Every single one of them had something real in them, and it made me believe the sky is the limit for what they’ll build and become.
And I think they felt it too. A girl from the Gold group, handed me her boat and told me to keep it as a gift. Another, also from the Gold group, made me a pipe-cleaner bracelet. A boy from the Purple group built a whole separate boat just for me. I still have all of it. I don’t think any of them understood what it meant to me, but it’s the best thing I took home from the whole week: a sense of leadership, a new perspective, and a real joy in guiding other people.
