A Week of Geek
Thursday, August 1st, 2002 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flwydI spent the last four days at CU's High School Honors Institute, affectionately called by one Group Leader "nerd camp." It's a chance for high school students to see what CU's engineering school has to offer, as well as time to have fun with geeky peers from across the state and nation (and a few folks from across the pond). My role as a Group Leader was to take students from the residence hall to various destinations and back again (I managed to walk into a lamp post after doing this for about two minutes), talk to students about experiences as an engineering and college student, oversee the design of boat race and egg drop entries, and hang out with the kids and have fun.
In consequence, I thus arose at 7:30 three days in a row (ouch) and slept in a room on the top floor of Cheyenne-Arapaho without an outlet near enough to the window for proper fan placement. But I also played a bunch of games of Fluxx, which can be really trying with eight or nine players, got a bunch of people to play the improv game where a story is told by each person saying one word at a time, and played Mafia for about two hours straight. I also had a bunch of cool conversations with high schoolers and other Group Leaders, helped acquire and prepare a blow-up party doll for the eggdrop (I'd never been to Fascinations before, it was neat), and went to see CSF's Midsummer Night Dream, which was traditionally staged and well done (the trees around the stage blended into the fairyscape really well).
I was impressed how social most of the kids were, despite being in AP classes, IB programs, and spending their free time playing with physics. Some of them even slept together, and presumably had sex (accomplishing more in two days of Engineering Camp than I did in two years of Engineering College). Being an engineering camp, supply and demand for girls was understandably skewed). I was also surprised how responsible they were -- the only discipline problems were a couple rooms where people were playing cards too loudly at 1am or so. I don't think anyone got into any illicit substances, there wasn't any violence, just people staying up unhealthily late. The only kid we thought was lost actually just fell asleep for most of the afternoon.
I hope I get to be an RA this year (I put my name back into the candidate pool, since some of my other plans for this year fell through). This was lots of fun.
In consequence, I thus arose at 7:30 three days in a row (ouch) and slept in a room on the top floor of Cheyenne-Arapaho without an outlet near enough to the window for proper fan placement. But I also played a bunch of games of Fluxx, which can be really trying with eight or nine players, got a bunch of people to play the improv game where a story is told by each person saying one word at a time, and played Mafia for about two hours straight. I also had a bunch of cool conversations with high schoolers and other Group Leaders, helped acquire and prepare a blow-up party doll for the eggdrop (I'd never been to Fascinations before, it was neat), and went to see CSF's Midsummer Night Dream, which was traditionally staged and well done (the trees around the stage blended into the fairyscape really well).
I was impressed how social most of the kids were, despite being in AP classes, IB programs, and spending their free time playing with physics. Some of them even slept together, and presumably had sex (accomplishing more in two days of Engineering Camp than I did in two years of Engineering College). Being an engineering camp, supply and demand for girls was understandably skewed). I was also surprised how responsible they were -- the only discipline problems were a couple rooms where people were playing cards too loudly at 1am or so. I don't think anyone got into any illicit substances, there wasn't any violence, just people staying up unhealthily late. The only kid we thought was lost actually just fell asleep for most of the afternoon.
I hope I get to be an RA this year (I put my name back into the candidate pool, since some of my other plans for this year fell through). This was lots of fun.
