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Major Breakthrough: Why I Majored in Camping

Dare to take the road less traveled?

In the Major Breakthrough series, I interview former students who have lived through, and lived with, their majors during and after college. What do you do with an English degree? What is it like to major in Astrophysics? Keep checking in to find the answers. This week, we’re going camping!

Is the Camping major right for you?

“Because of my major, I am now technically trained to put back a dislocated shoulder and pull traction in the wilderness.”

Riedden isn’t the hippie-dippy type. But after going to a traditional college for a few years, he decided to take a year off to figure out what he really wanted to do with his life. He ran some after-school camp programs and loved working with kids, but didn’t want to go the typical teaching degree route. So, in his words:

“I majored in camping.

Okay, technically I majored in Outdoor Leadership but we were required to go on multiple camping trips in order to graduate. I attended Warren Wilson College which is an 800 person collective farm school outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Not only did we have cattle and chickens, every student was required to work for the school in some capacity for 15 hours per week. This could be anything from doing dishes in the dining hall, to slopping the pigs in the morning, to doing forestry.

Anyway, back to the major. I went specifically to Warren Wilson for the Outdoor Leadership Major, a perfect combination of educational theory, business management and technical outdoors skills.

Though I joke about majoring in camping, the work was quite diverse. We learned grant writing, winter camping, group theory and even had to get our Wilderness First Responder certification. Because of my major, I am now technically trained to put back a dislocated shoulder and pull traction in the wilderness. Our major project was to develop an outdoors program from start to finish: from the mission and statement of need to the budget and lesson plans. I wrote an after-school program for middle school youth combining arts and the outdoors. The skills I gained going through the process have been very helpful throughout my career. I even had the YMCA offer to buy the after school program.

‘I would highly recommend the major for anyone who is passionate about both the outdoors and working with people – mind, body and spirit.’

Sure, there were some aspects of the program that I didn’t like. Warren Wilson is a bit of a crunchy hippie school so we spent a lot of class time checking in with each other and examining our feelings about the class process. Many of the classes also worked on the consensus decision making model so decisions were often slow to happen. This was hard as a person who is used to taking the lead

Many people ask me what my classmates did after graduation. Well, after they spent a few months hiking the Appalachian trail (I’m finally getting to it this summer) many went on to work with programs like NOLS and Outward Bound. There are also many therapeutic wilderness programs for adjudicated youth in the western North Carolina area and a lot of the graduates work for those programs.

I ended up teaching as I planned to and now work as a Montessori pre-k and kindergarten teacher. The outdoor leadership background has given me a unique perspective in my educational work and it taught me to think on my feet recognizing and creating teachable moments throughout the day. I would highly recommend the major for anyone who is passionate about both the outdoors and working with people – mind, body and spirit.”