AUBURN - It was a textbook case of taking intangibles and making them real.

For four days, 120 middle school students from Cayuga County and Skaneateles experienced what is was like to not only be book smart but to be savvy at sampling a career.

The eighth annual Career Connection camp held recently at the Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES Area Occupation Center in conjunction with Partnership for Results threw students into real world subjects such as cosmetology, culinary creations and house anatomy. Participating students were able to artfully apply makeup, combine ingredients into an entree and wire an outlet into a wall.

“It's a different style of learning. If you sit in a math class and hear those formulas, you'll wonder ‘why do I have to learn about circuitry?' Well here it is -here's how an electrician wires a wall - that's why,” said Ngaire M. Lovenduski, internship coordinator of BOCES. “There's nothing wrong with working with your hands and your mind.”

Which is what sixth to ninth grade students soon found out, whether by writing, acting, filming and editing a movie in video and animation or pulling apart a motorcycle in powersports and automotive technology. They also learned about how making friends on the job can produce spontaneous team spirit and fun.

“They're loving it! This is awesome!” Marcia Orr said. “It's the first summer camp they've ever been in that there are no complaints. They're up in the morning and ready to go.”

She was referring to her son, Kyle, and his friends, whom she had carpooled there. Career sampling of choice? Heavy equipment operation.

While the excavator Kyle had just been operating, just as the backhoe before it, dwarfed the soon to be sixth-grader of Jordan-Elbridge, he, like his fellow classmates, was quickly able to tame the two metallic elephants, turning them into precise mice.

After making the paw of the excavator swat two tennis balls off their pedestal, the previous veteran of riding lawnmowers and 4-wheelers admitted he'd done pretty well.

“Ever since the first time I went to work with my dad,” said Kyle of why he became interested in this particular career choice. “He's an electrician.”

He then had to divert his attention to cheering on a fellow operator, sitting high up at the controls.

Meanwhile, the backhoe was busy being taught how to scoop up a golf ball - using a spoon attached to its claw - and deposit it into a cup located a few feet away.

“That's how we get their operating skills to perfection,” explained instructor Darryl Jirinec. “What it teaches them is precision. How it can thread a needle if you want it to, as well as knock down a house. They are impressed by how they can command such a piece of machinery with just a couple of levers.”

But make no mistake, Jirinec said, manual dexterity is only a facet of a career that is readily employable and potentially technical in nature.

“If these guys were 18, I could employ every one of them as operators, truck drivers, mechanics,” said Jirinec who regularly gets calls from a engineering union from Syracuse inquiring about graduates. “A good operator can work year-round. After five years of being a caterpillar technician, you can make $50,000 or $60,000 a year. Everything is electronics: testing the machine and reprogramming the machine. These days you're no longer a grease monkey - you're a technician.”

Such insights into the various occupations offered at camp were regular discussion among the nine participating instructors and the middle schoolers who came to explore the opportunities this summer.

And, just as they have in the past, the teachers are likely to see a few familiar faces in their junior and senior age classes of the future.

“We are finding that we have kids, because of camp, coming into instruction,” Lovenduski said.

“Instructors ask, ‘What's your name? Haven't I seen you before?' The stigma of the old BOCES has dissipated as people get educated about what we do here. We have valedictorians who go through here. BOCES is not for dummies.”