Specialized camps have multiple payoffs

Speaking from personal experience, one of the most memorable ways a high school student can spend the summer is at an out-of-state camp with a specific focus. In the weeks away from home, one learns valuable skills and forms lasting friendships. The subject material offered through these programs is as varied as the students who take them.

This summer I attended a three-week program at Stanford University for sophomores and juniors interested in engineering. While there I saw kids in camps for tennis, baseball, business planning, the theory of relativity, remedial math and English, football, soccer, biochemistry and creative writing. We lived in dorms and sorority houses on campus, went to classes in the rooms Stanford students use during the school year, ate in their dining halls and hung out in their coffee houses.

Besides being an easy way to test out a field that I wasn't sure I liked (mechanical engineering), the program taught me math and physics skills that will come in handy during the rest of high school. It also gave me a great opportunity to scope out Stanford.

Because it was during the summer and no grades were attached, the level of stress was significantly lower. If our homework set was impossible one afternoon, we'd stop worrying about it, go sunbathing and take it to our teacher the next morning. He'd then spend the day teaching us how to calculate all the forces in lifting a weight or pedaling a bicycle.

Last summer, I attended a different sort of camp. I spent two weeks speaking French while living in log cabins in Minnesota. This was a Concordia Language Village. They offer a dozen different language immersion camps for high school students, nearly all of which are located in Minnesota. For students wanting to receive foreign language credit or skip a level in school, Concordia offers month-long programs. The counselors speak only in their designated language, and all the regular camp games and songs are executed entirely in that language. At the beginning of each meal, the counselors perform a skit to teach the vocabulary necessary to request each of the menu items, and they expect campers to use the proper words when asking for a dish.

It sounds intimidating to many students, but the campers help each other out and speak in English when necessary. Just a few weeks of immersion is surprisingly helpful when it comes to listening and comprehension skills and helps boost confidence in the campers' speaking abilities when they return to school. Just don't go with the expectation of learning conjugations -- almost all the teaching is verbal, and very rarely are campers expected to write anything.

More than anything, programs like these are a memorable use of precious summer freedom. It's common for high schoolers to keep in touch with their camp friends throughout the school year and to attend future sessions the following year. These programs offer a chance to have fun, meet people from all over the country and pursue academic interests without the stressful environment of school.

Elaine Parmelee is a junior at West High.