The Kids Who Conquered Their Campus
From the river to the sea, how do I make this about me?
A child’s first taste of power comes from their imagination.
In the real world, they can’t choose their bedtime or operate heavy machinery or eat unlimited ice cream. But in imagination-land, they can host tea parties and perform lavish makeovers and pilot rockets into outer space.
Tricycles become race cars, broken twigs become magic wands, the floor becomes lava. And best of all, the grownups play along!
We know there’s no tea in the teacups, we know their spaceships are made from cardboard, we know they lack the fine motor skills to hide the bags under our eyes, but we still drink their imaginary tea and swoon at their artlessly applied makeup and join them on their imaginary adventures.
Heck, we’ll even fire schoolteachers for telling kids that Santa isn’t real.
We instinctively want children to enjoy a world where they make the rules. At least for a while. Because one day, inevitably, they’ll have to grow up.
Sadly, by the time kids get to college, imagination-land doesn’t offer much power. But as some students are figuring out, there’s an alternative.
