liquid nitrogen and everything else by Ellie F. '28
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About a year ago, I posted a blog about what I thought would be my last year of Mathcamp. In hindsight, itās no surprise that I applied to return as a JC a few months later. And when my offer popped up in my inbox, I thought perhaps free will didnāt exist, because suddenly every other way I could spend my summer ceased to exist.
In June, I learned how to get quotes from car rental companies, how to organize spreadsheets, which numbers to call to reach different park rangers. In fact, I made so many calls that I ended up making a spreadsheet to rank all the hold music I was forced to listen to between increasingly desperate attempts to speak to a human.Ā
it’s crazy that they hire live sax players to make the hold music. i feel like that’s inhumane
In June, I also discovered catfishing (itās not that catfishing). It was a daily Wikipedia game that would give you the categories of ten articles for you to guess. Catfishing was everything I loved about high school quiz bowl, minus the people. Naturally, I started playing for about an hour a night, working through the archives at an unsustainable rate.
It can be hard to mark time at Mathcamp. For one, our weekends are Sunday and Monday, instead of Saturday and Sunday, which is exactly the kind of thing I get used to right when camp ends. And then, so much happens all the time that morning and night appear like different days and weeks permute and photo albums are the only ground truth of what happened when.
My timekeeper was liquid nitrogen ice cream, which we call LN2. For campers, LN2 starts and ends on Saturday, which is when the mixing and pouring and serving and eating occurs, but for me, Saturday was just the end of a week-long process. Early in the week, Linsey, the JC I worked on LN2 with, and I would take inventories of plastic spoons et al and plan the ingredients for next Saturdayās LN2. We always had some extra LN2, so on Wednesdays Iād hold an event to satisfy my sick curiosities around freezing various foodstuffs. Weād get a refill around Thursday or Friday and prep ingredients Friday night or Saturday morning. Two months removed from the end of camp, LN2 is now how I delineate the blurry weeks in my head.
This year, camp was at Lewis and Clark College, in Portland, Oregon. It was superlatively green and fairly hilly, and on the walk to the academic buildings, the trees parted just so to offer a view of Mt. Hood. I was excited to go to Portland for a totally normal reasonāthe airport PDX was recently renovated, and I really wanted to see it for myself. I ended up spending over 10 hours at PDX over the duration of camp. It was heaven.
In the week before the campers arrived (aptly named āprecampā) we moved furniture and drove to Walmart and went to meetings. A few days in, I pulled out my laptop at lunch to catfish, and suddenly the whole table was leaning over to see my screen and offer their input. That was the first day I got seven points.
LN2 0
The first LN2 typically happens the day after arrivals, while campers are still getting orientated. Maybe thatās why LN2 has always been the Mathcamp tradition I think of first. Baby Ellie (I was 17) probably imprinted on it like a duckling.
Anyway, Linsey and I had no idea what we were doing. Thankfully, mint chocolate chip is hard to mess up, and with enough liquid nitrogen, we froze the mixture into submission. Our second batch was Canada Flavour, which left my fingertips smelling faintly of maple syrup for three days.
Everyone at camp got an orange carabiner that we could exchange for takeout boxes to eat outside. I ended up eating nearly all my lunches outside with a solid group of both staff and campers. Inevitably, weād spend most of our time playing catfishing, along with the usual chatter. The dining hall food was subpar, but I always looked forward to that hour.
With the first week started the classic recurring mathcamp events: bedtime stories, star tripping, and Shabbat dinner, for a few. Among them was song swap, a space for everyone to share songs. Every year, Country Roads is inevitably brought up as our go-to singalong, and 2025 was no different.
“LN2” 1
We meant to refill our liquid nitrogen on Friday, which happened to fall on the Fourth of July. I learned that our supplier was closed EOD Thursday, so I scrambled to make an alternate plan in the middle of a colloquium on Banach-Tarski(-Hausdorff). We ended up cutting up and freezing (golden) watermelon, strawberries, and mandarins.
highlight of the day was asking campers what the yellow fruit is and watching them go through stages of grief
In The Frogs by Aristophanes, we learn that Ancient Greek frogs went āBrekekekex Koax Koax,ā a sharp contrast to modern-day English frogs, which go āRibbit Ribbit Croak Croak.ā At camp this year, Thu, another JC, had the brilliant idea of buying matching frog headbands, thus spawning a frog-themed cultural zeitgeist. Things tended to be greener than usual, we ranked our moods on a Hoppiness Meter, and tiny frogs were used as tokens during Relays, a weekly series of outdoor math games and puzzles.Ā
One late night, the JCs numbered a couple hundred aforementioned tiny frogs and hid them around the dorms, challenging the campers to find them and return them to their numbered box. The frogs had a secret, but as far as I know, no one ever figured it out.
so many frogs have returned!
For a couple dozen people, the Daily Plank is a sacred tradition. Every day before lunch, The Plankers would, according to their namesake, plank on the grass outside the dining hall. (I personally preferred the antiplankālaying on the grass and taking a short nap.) The Plankers liked to belt to music to distract themselves from the pain, and their favorite was Pompeii. We often conjectured what the other programs on campus thought of us.
LN2 2
This weekās LN2 was drink-themed. Our flavors were Earl Grey tea, matcha, boba, and coffee. As a whole, the campers were starved of pricey drinks from cute shops, and they ate it up, with the exception of Earl Grey. We had tried to make it vegan by substituting dairy with coconut milk, but even with our extra-strong Earl Grey brew, the flavor profile stayed overwhelmingly, spitefully coconut.Ā
One of our biggest field trips was Portland City, where we set the campers semi-loose in the city. We also offered some subtrips, one of which was to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, or OMSI for short. OMSI had a LEGO x Jurassic Park exhibition, where we got to see LEGO sculptures and give life to horrible creatures.
On July 14th, Mathcamp and the nation of France celebrate Bastille Day. Iām not sure how France honors the holiday, but at Mathcamp, we get out a bag of jumbo marshmallows and recreate the storming of the Bastille via intense dodgeball. July 14th also happened to be one of the British film nights put on by a mentor from the UK. In the French spirit, when they returned from watching Monty Python, we put aside our differences and āambushedā the Brits.
LN2 3
Our next LN2 theme was the tropics. My brilliant solution to the Problem of the Overwhelming Coconut when making vegan ice cream was to just embrace it. We decided to mix in small chunks of pineapple to create Pina Colada. It went alright. We also made ube and key lime pie flavors, the former of which stained the ground purple for weeks.
As it turns out, scootahs are good for more than just Scootah Hockey (I have a blog about that!) A camper really wanted to play hungry hungry hippos (see example), so we bought four scootahs, inflated a bunch of balloons, and learned that being a hungry hippo takes a lot of core strength. The scootahs were later employed in Janky Scootah Hockey, marathon scooting, and my proof of the hockey stick identity on the last day of camp.
the scootahs came disassembled lol
LN2 4
This weekās flavors were highlighter, chalk, and blue tape. We went for a sorbet instead of allowing the coconut to return. The campers were fairly excited to be eating various school supplies, which was about par for the course.
Iām not a theater kid, but I think I could be, theoretically. I like to sing and dance, but I havenāt been in a production since second grade. Thatās why I always look forward to Mathcamp Cabaret, where I get to belt and be dramatic without any commitment. Among many other songs, a camper killed it on āIf I Were a Rich Man,ā a few of us performed āMatchmakerā, and I sang a duet with Kermit the Frog in āAgonyā.
am i not sensitive, clever, well-mannered, considerate, passionate, charming, as kind as i’m handsome, and heir to a throne?
LN2 5
The last LN2 flavors were selected through a vote. We ended up with Berrypicking (one of our field trips), bees!, MCSP is frog, and cookie fairy (a daily occurrence where JCs dress up and hand out cookies and carrots). I ate a lot of ice cream that day.
On the day of camper departures, I was running on about an hour of sleep, half of which was bus-edition dozing. I also happened to be almost too sick to speak! However, the airport stops for no one, and in the lull between waves of campers, I kept myself awake and medicated through copious amounts of catfishing. Pirates of Penzance probably does not mean that much to most of Mathcamp, but somehow, I clearly remember that it showed up on catfishing on departure day. Also, it is so messed up that Gilbert and Sullivan made TWO comic operas about boats.
Working at Mathcamp meant I wasnāt a camper anymore, and thatās impossible not to miss. But in postcamp, I really felt like a camper again. We stayed up late, watched movies while braiding hair, laid on the floor and got faux-philosophical. On the final night, amid last-minute yearbook signing, we sang and rapped through all of Hamilton. Musicals past midnight have been core memories in my previous years, so Iām glad I got to experience one this year, too.
kermit was very happy about our choice of movie
It took me a lot of time to write this blog. I couldnāt figure out how to begin, and when I started writing, it came out a nostalgic, romantic mess. It is easy to tell concrete storiesāhere is what happened, and who was there, and let me show you the pictures from my photo album. But at the time of writing, I donāt think Iāve untangled the underlying feelings that this summer brought me.Ā
Here is what I have right now. I think I like the version of myself at Mathcamp the most. Iām energetic, full of schemes and the permeating magic that fills the lounges. I am more colorful, with my painted nails, purply hair, and streaks of marker on my skin. I am doing things always, so much of which I couldnāt fit hereāI helped organize two field trips! I conducted a choir! I ran an event every single day! At the same time, I am more responsible. I havenāt learned how to juggle objects (yet),01 jugglingJUGGLINGJGUGLING LESRN T( O UJGULGe - courtesy of Joy Juggler but I could mostly handle all the tasks I set out to accomplish and stay hoppy.Ā
It’s harder at college, when my psets and clubs and the rest leave me with just enough time to dream about doing something more. I don’t wake up as easily, especially now that the sun lingers less and less. For a couple weeks, I simply could not afford to spend any time dawdling. But recently, I’ve been putting in effort to build in tiny sidequests, things that are worth maybe a minute of conversation, but that make me feel more in control of my time. I painted frogs on my nails, and I’ve planned a hike for Sunday (if the rain doesn’t cancel it). Even in a place as inherently interesting as MIT, it can be easy to fall into the banalities of work, work, work, work, work(as Rihanna once said). But Mathcamp, in my three years of loving it, has taught me how to find and grow the little absurd, lovely rebellions that make me who I want to be.
- jugglingJUGGLINGJGUGLING LESRN T( O UJGULGe - courtesy of Joy Juggler back to text ā