The Students You Meet at Paleontology Camp

My 2006 field paleontology camp students in John Day, OR.

I always find it interesting working with high school students in extended outdoor programs. In my observations, my paleontology camp students have usually fallen in to one or more of these five groups: 


1) Dinosaur/Fossil Enthusiast students: Knows all the dinosaurs/fossils, where and when they lived, who their friends were, and what contemporary musicians they loved best. (Triceratops was definitely into post-Sauropod Cricket Chirp Harmonies, especially their early stuff.) They will share all of this with you, probably before the end of the first day. Then continue to share more until the camp ends. Get ready to have a whole lot of knowledge dropped on you!

2) Ambitious, Gets Stuff Done students: Sees something that needs doing, and gets it done. First to volunteer, even for crappy tasks that just need to get finished. Does the same difficult things as everyone else, but sticks with them twice as long and does them twice as well. Camp cooking or dish duty, digging a trench or flipping a giant field jacket, trying to interpret the first phylogenetic tree they've ever built/computed, helping pull a van out of the mud, or quarrying a hillside in 100 degree heat without a bit of whining; they will do it, and by god they are going to do it as best as they can until it's done or until they drop.

3) WOO Let's Go Do Stuff Outside students: Is it outside? Then this kid is stoked about it. Hiking in heat? Woohoo! Slogging through mud with an 80 pound jacketed fossil? Awesome! Spider in the tent? OOO it's got cool colors and mouth parts! Dead animal near a bush? Let's figure out what it is and what all these bones are! Man... it really smells... WHOA WHOA WHOA IT HAS BEETLES ON IT AND THEY ARE BURROWING INTO THE DIRT!

4) Power-Nerd students: Science is the best. Some science may be better than other science, but so long as it is science, it's the greatest thing ever. Sometimes science-fiction can also be the greatest thing ever too.... but hey, it's still got "science" in it, so close enough! Now let's talk about how freaking crazy wormholes and deep-sea tube worms are! Or who was the better captain: Kirk or Picard? Yaaaay!

5) Nature Hippie student: Easily the most laid back and universally friendly of the students. They are here because it sounded fun, and fun they will have! What they lack in intensity they make up for in pure-hearted love of seemingly all things. Meeting new people, meeting new caterpillars, carefully examining a pretty rock for no reason other than it looked cool; everything is neat and interesting in some way. They like nearly everything and everyone, with a parade that simply refuses to get rained on.

My 2014 field paleontology camp students, in western KS.

Sometimes over the course of a camp, especially long programs, I have seen students shift between these categories, which is always neat. Of all these groups, when it comes to pursuing a future career in science, I am most optimistic about students that fall at least partly into group 2. Why? Because even though they may not be walking encyclopedias at age 15, they get after everything that comes at them, even if it's a completely new task or experience.
 
(By the way, if anyone out there is looking to recruit a very promising high school student/future undergrad who has strong interests in metamorphic geology and engineering, let me know.)

Sternberg Science Camps 2015 planning is currently underway! The catalog for the summer 2015 camps should be out in the next few months. It's being completely revamped by the wonderful folks at the FHSU Relations Department. Stay tuned for more info on the new camps being debuted!