I've often mentioned that, just before BerkFer VA, I spend two and a half weeks cooped up on the GMU campus. For two years, I was a camper. For the past three, a staff member.

I've mentioned that my going to camp in 2011 changed the course of my life: it got me into the activity I do even today, it convinced me to try out for the GMU team and thus attend George Mason, it gave me friends that have lasted to this day, and it changed who I am as a person in a myriad ways.

To say I await for every George Mason Institute of Forensics is an understatement. However, this was a very odd one.

Unlike my first year as a staffer, with no experience or lessons to teach campers, or last year, where I was still recovering from illness and worked as a first-year lab assistant, this year was different. For the first time, I felt confident enough that I had something to teach these kids. I was the most senior member of the Oratory Junior Faculty, and worked with the other Junior Staff to divide responsibilities equally so we could all teach. I was a second-year lab assistant, with an incoming Graduate Student and coach for our team for his first year as a lab leader. I felt more prepared and confident to teach these kids.

It helped that, during one of our nightly Performance Hours, I was able to perform my piece on Jaime Garzon whom I've mentioned previously. Being the last time I'd perform the piece, and with a sense of urgency to spread Jaime's message and story one last time, I amended the piece slightly to reflect this urgency and importance. I cried, for the first time in six years, in a performance, delivering what I think is the performance I am most proud of. Many students later approached me, saying that though they were not Colombian, they had cried and empathized alongside me. And, during the Q&A session after the four performances, the first student to talk, said, in Spanish and in front of staff and students alike, that he was happy that he saw someone else spreading Jaime's story, and, through tears, expressed hope that our country will see the end to 53 years of violence. When I prepared and worked on this piece all year long, I always expected it to be solely for United Statesian audiences. Never would I imagine my last performance would be seen by another compatriot, in what I can honestly describe as one of the most meaningful and magical moments of my life.

As camp drew near and it unofficially ended tonight, I went through a whirlwind of emotions. Seeing students who'd arrived two weeks ago total strangers and with no speeches, to leaving as best friends with prepared performances. Seeing my teachers, now my co-workers, be vulnerable and explain why they did Forensics. To see students, like I had been years ago, have their lives change radically over the course of the two weeks. We laughed, we cried, we were vulnerable, we were powerful.

We were human, and we saw so much humanness over a two-week period.

GMIF is the moment of the year that reminds me who I am, why I do what I do, and what it means to be part of the human experience. And, as every year, I am reinvigorated to go forth until GMIF rolls around again in 365 days. And I will count down the days, waiting to relive these two most human weeks, all over again.