The day “ended” for me when I had to watch the bus full of my friends slowly pull out of campus on their way to the airport. Never in my life have I cried like I did in that moment, because I knew what that would mean. And unfortunately, my suspicions were correct. When I got home I realized that for the first time in a long time, it was silent. I ate lunch with no friends yelling across the room, laughing till their faces went red. I fell asleep without my roommates telling me about their day and discussing weirdly philosophical questions. And weirdly enough, I never thought I’d find myself missing the problem sets that plagued me during SSP. And to make matters worse. The fact that this silence would be permanent settled in. From now on, every night would be a silent one.

Originally, I was going to end my post there. However after letting it settle in for a very long time, I remembered a great quote by the famous Andrew B. 

“Don’t be sad it’s ending, be happy it happened”.

This cheesy line holds some truth to it. I have changed and improved so much through SSP, and I’m so happy that I was able to come here, meet outstanding new people, learn incredible new things, and change the course of my life because of it.

-Darnell

The post Astro GCSU:  A Silent Night first appeared on SSP International.

As I walked into Herty I was surprised with a birthday song and board. I had totally forgotten it was my birthday! I never realized how awkward having happy birthday sung to you is…

We downloaded all our hard work from the SSP laptops and took pictures with our precious child (our PAPER!)

Back at Bell everyone began to pack up their things. Kal, the last to pack, dragged out all his clothes into the hallway to pack while next to everyone, sitting out singing songs.

Later in the afternoon everyone got ready together for final day photos. And after a series of fit check pictures we all walked out together in style.

Group photo, silly photos, but amidst taking the regional photos it started to pour. Rainy day pictures!

Unsurprisingly, during our last supper, everyone sprung into a happy birthday song yet again. 

On our way to the closing guest speaker, the worst news was delivered to us. Gwanpil would be leaving in less than 30 minutes, as we said our last goodbyes and gave final group hugs, tears rolled down our faces. 

“Till next time pebble boy”

After the guest speaker the TAs surprised us with PAPER PLATE AWARDS! “Muscles and Microphones” “Most attentive” “Programmer Moyen” “Snazzy Jazzy”

The rest of the night we spent singing songs and reminiscing about the early SSP experience. As expected everyone cried, as we would all be leaving the bonds we made over the past 5 weeks. I think I might have cried the most. As the clock ticked by we counted down to our last SSP sunrise.  

-Lauren

The post Astro GCSU: The Little Pebble first appeared on SSP International.

Not actually Thinh btw

After the presentations and the amazing lecture from our SWRI guest speakers, we headed to
Chick-fil-a for lunch, where Sahil the goat bought me a Spicy Deluxe Meal as my birthday
present. THANKS BUDDY! It tasted like chicken.
Then we got the pleasure of having Dr. Carbon explain his fascinating research topic to us.
Basically (if I understood it correctly), there are noise signals in every data point that an
astronomer takes, and the large data set would be limited to the picture with the highest noise
signal, making only one data point possible. What Dr. C did was that he ranked the pictures in
order of the strength of their noise signals and took the one data point. Then, he deleted the
picture with the highest noise signal and plotted the new data set, which gave another data point
that was different from the original one, and repeated this process until the end. HE WAS THE
FIRST EVER PERSON TO DO THIS!!!!! When he explained this to us, the whole class started
clapping out of amazement. I truly feel blessed for having had the opportunity to learn from
these amazing professors for the past 5.5 weeks. This was also the last academic lecture we
would have at SSP, so it was bittersweet. It was nice in that it meant we would have no more
work, but all of us felt like the program went by extremely quickly and we would all miss each
other.
After the lecture, we wrote thank-you letters to SSP sponsors and cleaned up the classrooms.
It’s cool to think about how SSP impacted these people so much that even decades after this
shirt 5.5-week summer program, they still deeply care about the program and actively support it.
I want to be in a position in which I can help out the program in the future as well, just like these
generous donors.
Then we ate dinner, where my table made fun of me for not knowing my travel plan by heart and
not knowing when my school starts. And then we went to the hive and chilled for a bit. Here are
some things we did:

Kal using Sour as his gym equipment

Human pyramid with Aditya, Gwanpil, Sahil, Andrew, Kal, and Eduardo

Spelling Bee (Darnell won!)

SSP shirts and hoodies!

Jonathan waving at the camera (he never does this)

And then we played tag from 10pm to midnight, when it was Lauren’s birthday and the day
ended. Of course, we sang happy birthday to her as soon as the clock struck 12.

Happy birthday Lauren!

-Gwanpil

The post Astro GCSU: Presentation Day first appeared on SSP International.

-Taja

The post Astro GCSU: 50 million years of asteroid<<20 minutes of Indian Food first appeared on SSP International.

Michael N.’s Liebestraum no 3 (Love Dream) by Franz Liszt

Gwanpil’s magic card trick with Dr. Ice as a volunteer

Ian’s high-quality low budget drum performance

Dr. C’s “Nel blue dipinto di blu”

Aditya’s stand-up comedy

(from left to right ) Katie, Viktoria, and Isa’s jazz performance. Isa also had an amazing origami story show but the lighting was not ideal for photos.

Jean’s angelic singing of “Time to Say Goodbye” 

After being robbed by the airline for a 140-dollar special checked bag ticket for my violin on the flight to Atlanta, I knew I had to play something in today’s talent show despite the 3-year hiatus from playing the violin. I had never been especially skilled with the instrument so I lost my interest after playing in an orchestra full of perfect pitch prodigies that practiced 4 hours per day. In addition, transitioning to boarding school life in the US made me lose many of my former hobbies, including playing the violin. Thus, the 5 weeks of consistent and inconsistent practice sessions on the piece “Howl’s Moving Castle” with my fellow trio musicians, Kal (flute) and Sara (violin), was like a “renaissance” of my life back in China as I continued to wreak havoc upon my fellow musicians with my out-of-tune notes and “chronic rush syndrome” (hence “Kal’s burning Castle”). Despite countless hours of practice, our performance was below the average quality of our practices but I guess things in real life don’t have perfect endings as they do in stories. Nevertheless, even if the performance was perfect, it would not have been more meaningful than the reconciliation with my former passion and the friends I made along the way. For this, I would like to thank Sara and Kal for keeping me on this wonderful journey (and for your infinite patience in tolerating my playing):

“Kal’s Burning Castle” with (from left to right) overqualified page flipper Alan, Kal, Jonathan, and Sara

-Jonathan

The post Astro GCSU: Kal’s Burning Castle first appeared on SSP International.

The past 5 weeks, all I’ve been able to think about is putting one step ahead of the other and working as consistently as possible for as long as I can. Days are long — quite literally, I’m usually up until 1:30 a.m. — but hindsight makes memories short. I don’t know where the time has gone. I could’ve sworn that my first lecture was a week ago; that PSet 4 was due yesterday; that we were at the movies just an hour ago; and everything in between was just a long dream that dissipated the instant I woke up.

Oddly enough, this is the slowest week I have had at SSP. I thought the week of report-writing would be when I crunch in the maximum amount of work, but these have instead been the days where I’ve enjoyed field trips the most (who knew I would enjoy hours being battered by salty waves?), spent the most time playing piano, loved the people around me to the fullest.

I have a lot of people to thank and so many of you that I will always wish I spent a bit more time with (but the reality is that all the time in the world will possibly never be enough). So I’ll say this for now:

• Thank you to my wonderful roommates: Divya, Sai, and Taja (my rock, stone, and pebble — because it’s ridiculous for all of you to be my rock — respectively). Our 87.5% brown suite is the best I could have asked for. I’m glad you’ve gone along with my (mildly aggressive) attempt to indoctrinate you into my purebred Tamil life, and I’m equally glad you liked the Indian snacks and thokku (you’ve made my mother very happy). Our weekly debriefs are still among the best nights I’ve had here, and you just make me feel like my silliest, most open self.
• Thank you Lindy for being the girlboss I wish I could be. You are my biggest inspiration at this camp and every day I fall in even more awe of you (you prove that there are cases where the limit does not exist and just shoots into infinity). I could not have asked for a better teammate, and I don’t know that I’ll ever understand how a person can be so cracked and humble all at the same time. I hope you’ve found me to be at least half as good a teammate to you as you have been to me — and hopefully a good friend, too. Finishing our report gave me so much pride and joy, especially knowing that I did it with you.

• Thank you Olivia for making me feel sane despite my teacup obsession, and for keeping an eye out for fountain pens at that antique store. I may not have walked out with any, but the very thought that someone indulges me and my weird hobbies is a high I can ride for a long time.
• Thank you Andria for showing me Idea 22. I’ve never felt so loved as a pianist, and now I finally understand why the audience is always so important to a performer. I hope I’m able to do a good job of playing the piece at tomorrow’s talent show, but more importantly — I hope it brings you joy.
• Thank you Jasmine, for that awesome day at the aquarium and for being one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. You make me (and everyone else who enters your presence) feel warm and fuzzy with your kindness.
• Thank you to my silly little D&D group. You make me want to keep my eyes open on the bus and stay up late, even if I’m getting my hit points decimated most of the time. I’m holding you to this: we’re going to call and play D&D sometime after SSP is over, okay?
• Thank you to my professors. I’ve been pushed quite far out of my comfort zone while here, but somehow each new lecture feels more exciting than daunting. You’ve made me realize that I really can do anything I put my mind to.
• Thank you to my awesome TAs for grading my assignments late at night and offering truly helpful feedback. And, of course, for creating those little havens of pure fun to make our minds off those spells of stress. And thank you Dr. Ice, for watching out for us, keeping our fridge stocked, organizing every field trip, and for creating here all the little conveniences I’ve taken for granted at home.
• Thank you to everyone else too! My memory is a bit too much like a goldfish’s to remember every moment, but you can believe me when I say this: every conversation with every person here gave me joy.

I’ll miss all of you tons. I can’t wait for your final presentations on Sunday and we are all going to do amazing. I hope you all have safe trips home, and that I am able to talk my parents into letting me go to that reunion in October so we can meet again. You’ve been great. Love you loads. Promise me you’ll kick back and relax now that we’ve submitted reports, okay?

-Sanjana

The post Astro GCSU: Final Report Day first appeared on SSP International.

Nevertheless, there was no better way to start the day than Dr. M’s E&M lecture; we went through Biot Savart Law (Bee-oh Suh-var according to Pierre – the French guy) and magnetism in general. Learnt new great concepts. However, perhaps the funniest part of class was witnessing the confused dead-silence after Dr. M repeatedly said “I know most of you had already seen this before” when going over the differential forms of E&M equations when in fact the majority of the class, if not all, was seeing these equations for the first time in their lives. The lecture ended at approximately 11am and we had work time until lunch and after lunch to 3.30pm – this was when we went back to the dorm to dress up for our guest speaker Dr. Barrientos. And just before Michael C. attacked Andrew N. with a compressed water bottle, everyone seems to be fed up of Michael C.’s violent demeanor. (just joking Michael is probably the nicest and kindest person I ever knew)

Anyways, thanks to Dr. Barrientos’s beautiful presentation on the effects of surgery and high fat diets on rat’s declining cognitive abilities, I decided to avoid getting surgeries and eating burgers for a life-time. Not so sure on how to avoid surgeries but we’ll work on it hopefully. The group promptly headed to the dining hall when Dr. Barrientos finished answering questions; we sang Happy Birthday a multitude of times while having dinner as well. Thanks to all my fellow cohortmates! We of course went to work after dinner; this work session proved to be particularly fruitful to me because I learnt how to draw LaTeX diagrams – I wanted to learn this for over a year but never had the opportunity to do so. It is a little sad that the only visual I have from the day is a scientific diagram, but all sadness turns into the purest form of joy when you look at this diagram – look at this beauty!!!

-Kaan

The post Astro GCSU: Kaan’s Birthday Post first appeared on SSP International.

After lunch we returned to Herty to work, but not before we were treated to a lecture by one of our TAs, Ian. His presentation, titled ‘my talk’, was about how to give a presentation. He explained how to practice, how to stand, and how to talk. For example, he demonstrated how at the two extremes of the familiarity continuum there are ‘the mess’ – has no idea what they’re talking about, and ‘the TED talker’ – has practiced a million times and knows everything by heart. His advice was to stay in the middle – know what you’re talking about, but it shouldn’t be clear that everything has been memorized. At the end of his presentation, he split us into groups of 5 and gave us 10 minutes to create a part of a presentation on bees, and the best group would win the “#1 speech-giver award”. Unfortunately, as it turns out, having 35 students on a single google presentation while on a bad wifi network doesn’t go very well. Someone pasting the entire bee movie script certainly didn’t help either. As the presentation was essentially impossible to edit, and we had no motivation to work hard on the speech, we all goofed around. In the end, Ian gave the “#1 speech-giver award” to not only one group, but to all of us!

After Ian’s talk, we resumed working until dinner, and both the work time and dinner passed uneventfully. After dinner, we hung out downstairs in the common area we call the Hive. There, Sara discovered two things: one, that I was the only other person here who had heard of the grocery chain Albertsons, and two, that Albertsons is based out of Boise, Idaho. Unfortunately for her, this means that she can never step foot in one ever again. After this devastating blow, we started walking over to work at Herty. When we got to the front door, there was a small puddle that we needed to cross, so Olivia and Sai had to help Sara cross the puddle, or else she would surely trip and die. And now, here I am at Herty, procrastinating working on my report by writing this blog. Unfortunately, as I have now finished writing this blog, I now have no excuses left to procrastinate. 

-Pierre

The post Astro GCSU: By All Known Laws of Aviation first appeared on SSP International.

-Pranav

The post Astro GCSU: Beach Trip! first appeared on SSP International.

After some time had passed, the TA talk had commenced starting off strong with Evan. His presentation started off strong with thought provoking questions like why a man regretted his decision to glue glass pieces on a string, which was obviously because he was in a kite flying competition where it was illegal to do. Isa seemed to be the only one with common sense as she was the only one with the correct answer. We started off by going over several interesting and very real fish like the loch ness monster, the loveland frog and many more eventually ranking them. We did the same thing for other types of cryptic beings with interesting attributes/personalities. The talk ended with a task to create our own cryptic monsters, there were a lot of great ideas like the ominous Bathil, and THE Cube but Pierre’s creature, “the average programmer” prevailed victorious. 

The second TA talk was a little more content heavy where we learned about Maura’s research where she used the x-ray telescope to make observations on a potential black hole, but it ended off with a nice fun card game that I had never played before. At first I thought the card game made no sense, but after a few games I ended up enjoying it and even winning a few rounds. 

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, mostly consisting of working on the PSET as well as our final report. I’m genuinely content with all the work I’ve accomplished at this program and I’m excited to finish this report and wrap up all the hard work I’ve done into one final complete project. 

-Sahil

The post Astro GCSU: A Cryptic Day first appeared on SSP International.