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Fond Memories of Nerd Camp
Slate's "Summer Camp" issue has revived a piece from a few years back recounting author Meghan O'Rourke's experience as a student at "nerd camp." O'Rourke was a student at Johns Hopkin's CTY program (bias alert: so was I, and remain a fan), but I suspect there's a lot in common with the various Governor's Schools and programs like Duke's TIP. What's been your experience with such programs? Are you going to one now? Are your kids?
I did this camp the summer before senior year, and it was the best six weeks of my life so far. We were walked through the process of doing observations and writing a script to calculate the orbit of a near-earth asteroid. (The name is generic because the camp dates to the 50s.) Not anymore, obviously, but I understand that way back when Richard Feynman and some other folks at Caltech would guest-lecture from time to time.
Governor's School was the first place I discovered where asking questions, thinking carefully and communicating clearly were valued rather than suppressed. It gave me hope that there were communities that valued wrestling with questions and solving problems and encouraged me to seek them out.
I went to Camp Atari. I didn't learn anything, but the Warez were awesome! Getting disks was much better than downloading things at 300bps...
I also did Camp Watonka in the Poconos, where I got early exposure to amateur radio, model rockets, rifles, and extra-circular Dungeons & Dragons!
AKA "I'm redefining intelligence to something that paints me in the most favorable light"
It's okay. We all do it. But you should at least admit it instead of making silly claims like "for the usual mark of a genius is the ability to quickly analyse and adapt, and nerds' abilities are usually too narrow to manage that." Yeah, that's *one* definition, but it's not the *only* definition.
I went to CTY for two summers. Some of the best experiences I had as a young kid were there. I also later went to PROMYS, which is Boston Univesity's program which teaches number theory to highschool students which I then ended up working for as a counselor when I became an undergrad. These programs are very good for kids.
I was like 10 or 11, IIRC. The older kids picked on me, and on the first day, one of the counselors yelled at me, made me cry, and called me a sissy. That's right, I was bullied at nerd camp. ;-)
But otherwise it was pretty cool. I think I did programming for the whole week. When they figured out that I had a handle on BASIC, they taught me Apple II assembler, which was pretty exciting at the time.
My brother and I both went (different years) to the Ohio Supercomputer Summer Institute. While I can't say it was a life-altering experience (we both were already interested in computers and programming; you needed to be to get into the program since applicants have to solve a simple programming problem), it was a great experience both socially and practically—we got to make friends with other geeky kids and do work (and play) on "real" computers (everything at the time was done on SGI workstations running IRIX and we even got accounts on Cray and SGI supercomputers) and do generally cool stuff. I think that in terms of actual usefulness to the local/regional/educational/technical community though, a longer and perhaps more introductory program would have been better. 2 weeks isn't long enough to accomplish a lot when you're trying to get things done with excited teenagers (it would be hard for anyone), and the fact that the program is limited to somewhat-experienced kids means that while you can accomplish more in that short time you also are not really doing a lot to get new people interested and engaged with technology.
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I did three years of Duke TIP; The first year was really useful for getting me to open up socially. The second year I took a political philosophy class, and it lead me to really re-evaluate my beliefs and values. The third year, though, was the one that affected me most. I had a very exciting class on Nanotechnology (first term 2008) that really sparked an ambition in me. Now I'm about to publish my first math paper and attend Caltech. I wouldn't be where I am without having gone to TIP.
I went to New England Computer Camp. 8086 Assembly in the morning, Trapeze and Fire Eating in the afternoon. That was an awesome camp.
I have great memories of being in middle school and going to a "camp" at the highschool computer lab for several days in the summer. We got to play with legos (before mind storms and NXT) hooked up to Apple IIe's, programmed in Logo. That was the best.
Later I got a job at the school and found the kits packed away in boxes in the basement. I got permission to borrow some kits and had a great time reliving the experience.
I did CTY one summer, at Franklin and Marshall. I studied informal logic-- what math majors would probably dismiss as mere rhetoric. I got in trouble for going off with a bunch of my friends and playing D&D during "Mandatory Fun."
Stranded with only a hatchet, a pan, some fishing gear, a warm coat & "snow pants" I soon realized I needed shelter to survive the -40 degree nights so I built a suitable shelter in the lee of a tree. After nearly being caught in a storm too far from shelter, I stayed until Spring.
Being totally disconnected from everyone and all electronics (they froze, and died) while surviving off the land (ice fishing at night, collecting firewood and sleeping during the day) for three solid months changed my perspective about what's really important. I spent a lot of time thinking while "camping" under the cold clear sky -- Shooting stars can be seen at least once every two hours, you can see our satellites orbiting with the naked eye, and the Aurora Borealis can appear in a myriad of shapes and colors, once as if the whole sky was a giant red wagon wheel.
Our temperately stable planet is so beautiful yet insignificant -- The whole thing could disappear and the universe wouldn't notice at all, only our solar system might, a bit. The only real thing that matters now is getting off this rock so all our eggs aren't in one basket... We're so self important, petty and insignificant, but it's technology and sharing of knowledge that can make us great, if we put aside not-so-different differences we may even be able to survive the heat-death of the universe by creating our own stars.
Perhaps it was more of an "anti-geek camp", but I'm truly more driven, easy-going and appreciative of all the amazing technology I have... I now walk away from wastes of time, enjoy in camaraderie, collaboration and contributing to software projects, and think of benefits and consequences in terms far beyond my own life-span. It was a true "thinking man's" experience, to say the least.
... especially in the comments :-)
I was one of many children. We didn't go to camp much. Instead, we explored the city parks and library. We designed and built our own rockets with no adult supervision. Not all of them flew as expected. We explored forgotten civil war forts, mapped (and found) old trenches between forts, built ham radio gear and antennas, studied assembly language programming on a local university's DecSystem-20, and read mounds of science fiction.
In short, I didn't need a camp to teach me how to do this stuff. I am a self made nerd.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!