With the intersession period officially over for almost two weeks now, Stanford has decreed that summer has officially started (the solstice and the start of the quarter happened to fall on the same day this year), and it don’t take long to notice that summer@Stanford looks a little bit different than the academic year. In an oddly fitting twist of fate, the World’s Perpetual Summer Camp goes literal; Stanford transmogrifies into an actual summer camp all season long, and it never gets boring to watch that happen.

Even after three years of RF kids and punk 14-year-old skaters wiping out on the steps of Old Union, it’s still weird to see children on this campus, much less large groups of them. Children on this campus always seem like they’re walking around in oversize grown-up clothes, which is ironic considering how this place is built for the bicycle. No matter though, busloads of ’em keep coming week in and week out. They all carry that delightfully teenage blend of smugness and confusion, crystallized in the contemptuous yelling of “Cool scooter! Can I ride it?” in my direction as I zip by them, all while in the process of being escorted to yet another organized activity. Their internal issues are all on display. They become the opposite of the Stanford duck, which I guess would be a hummingbird.

Not that I’m not somewhat jealous of them though. As a teenager I would have loved to have gone to Stanford for camp. The closest I ever approached a university setting was Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio, where we stayed in cabins that had the setup of a Motel 6 and listened to the same Toby Keith album on repeat (it was already in the player and nobody had brought any other music). Instead, these ungrateful snots get to hole up in our beautiful old row houses, filled with history that they know nothing about because Housing scrubs away any trace of student presence. Even in their faux-pristine state though, places like Kairos and Phi Psi are way cooler buildings than any that I’ve ever seen at camp.

Yessiree, they might not realize it, but these campers are living pretty high off the hog, or large clump of tofu shaped into a hog depending on your dietary preferences, because Stanford Dining is far more accommodating than any mess hall. The sports camp kids are getting tips from all those Director’s Cup-winning athletes in some of the best facilities in the world. The nerd camp kids get to learn about video game design in the computer science Mecca, and my friends that are EPGY counselors are some of the brightest people I know. There’s significantly less urine in Avery than there is in the average swimmin’ hole, and Tres Ex and Jamba Juice beat the pants off of anything my canteens could ever come up with. Just imagine the woodworking possibilities given the resources of the product design lab. One stay at almost any of these camps would assuredly have provided me with three scrapbooks of Memories That Will Last a Lifetime and reason to actually tear up upon hearing “Good Riddance.”

Of course, Memories That Will Last a Lifetime don’t come for free, and that’s never truer than it is here. A sojourn to some of these camp websites left me with a sticker shock I hadn’t felt in three years. Camp is always expensive, but most don’t cost $4,700 for three weeks. I’m pretty sure that’s more than the camp I went to where Bruce Willis sent all three of his kids. It’s not just money that turns camp into a transaction: camps are also another form of college app resume-building. All their websites sell the skills you will learn at their camp as much as, if not more, than the experiences, which makes sense because “I’m not just spending $4700 on a three week long babysitter; I’m investing it in my children’s future,” or some other authoritative parental reason like that. At these camps, kids are supposed be learning about global issues, professional-level computer programs, and sound basketball fundamentals, and sometimes they even get graded. Best not to mention all this to the campers though. After all, camp’s supposed to fun, and when they’re not yelling at me on my scooter, they usually look like they’re having it.