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.

-Kal

The post Astro GCSU: “I am the best astronomer” first appeared on SSP International.

Following the lecture, we headed to the cafeteria for our lunch: mac and cheese, vegetables, flatbread cheese pizza, and the wonderful delicacy of Hi-C, my only source of Red Dye 40 since they cut off the pink lemonade supply. At lunch, I sat at the table with our guest speaker, and talked some about what they did and what they were presenting about.

After lunch, it was time for the guest speaker’s presentation. We all headed to the lecture hall for Dr. Cynthia Alby’s presentation on education and AI. We talked about different forms of AI and their varying influences and roles, both present and future, in education and professional fields. Afterwards, we held a reception, where we could talk with them one on one or in small groups while eating chips and guacamole (Aditya finally got his avocados!)

We returned to the Hive post-presentation, and following some intense table tennis matches, it was time for our second session of Dungeons and Dragons! With a high concentration of nerds, SSP is a bustling haven for the game. The day before, we had explained the rules and introduced people to the game, and now, we finally began. Some drama ensued, including Pierre and Eduardo getting kidnapped, the rest of us stealing a ship, and then kidnapping them back (along with a few of the kidnappers). Sai had to repair the ship 56 times. How unfortunate.

Dungeons and Dragons unfortunately was forced to end by the existence of dinner. Right as we were about to ungag a screaming Pierre and Eduardo, we left for the cafeteria. Hopefully they didn’t have anything important to say. Dinner consisted of a rice, cheese, and black bean burrito, which was delicious although unfortunately quite messy on account of the burrito being placed on top of the condiments. Not the standard setup, but we succeeded with a variety of strategies: I cut it up with a knife and fork, others simply transferred everything to a separate plate. Unfortunately, the pink lemonade maintained its absence.

Following our meal, I played a few more games of table tennis in the Hive before heading to Herty to work on problem sets and coding. Problem set 5 dropped today, so I got to work on it immediately (mostly orbital mechanics). Later in the evening, my group was observing. I headed to the observatory with Taja and Andrew, and I assumed my role of note taking with diligence. Things did not go exactly as planned.

Observation session notes (all times in UT): 

2:30 – slewed to home position

2:33 – accidentally took image

2:37 – slewed to HIP 65639, magnitude 4.76

2:38 – began auto focus routine

2:41 – auto focus failed

2:42 – discovered telescope was pointed at wall

2:43 – slewed to HIP 64238, magnitude 4.38

2:45 – discovered telescope still pointed at wall

2:46 – hit by water in observatory

2:48 – Claire leaves to check if it is raining

2:49 – call from Sanjana informs us that it is in fact raining outside and that she and Sourish are locked out

2:50 – Claire returns to confirm rain

2:57 – Claire leaves again to check rain

2:58 – Andrew tried to give me frostbite with compressed air

3:04 – Claire returns; rain has stopped

3:06 – slewed to HIP 77512

3:07 – auto focus failed, cloud covering entire field of view

3:07 – observing canceled 

3:09 – slewed back to home position

3:11 – disconnected telescope

3:12 – closed shutter, powered off telescope

Not quite the result we were hoping for, but it could have been worse.

I returned from observing and soon headed back to the Hive. There, I found cake (thanks Taja!) and Sara begging people to play dungeons and dragons again (she “yearns for the lore”). So, after convincing Darnell (our dungeon master) of its grave importance, we resumed play. Nothing much happened aside from arguing over whether or not to untie Pierre and Eduardo after we had rescued them. I’m sure they’ll be fine.

Finally, I returned to my room to finish up writing my blog post and go to sleep. All in all, a wonderful day of physics, math, astronomy, and DnD.

– Michael C

P.S: Apparently we’re waking up at 7 am tomorrow morning to resume. Pandora’s box has been opened, and now nobody can stop (especially Sara)

The post Astro GCSU: DnD II first appeared on SSP International.

Today is June 30th, a Sunday, which means we get the whole day off. I woke up at 7:30 am to the nth episode of a Dungeons and Dragons podcast blasting in my headphones (I fell asleep to the podcast the day before, trying to learn the game). I then went back to sleep and woke up at 9:30 am, because Sundays are the only days we get to sleep in. At around 10:30 I went down to the Hive to meet with the DnD group. 

Today was my first day officially playing DnD. (Thank you, Sai and Michael, for introducing me to the game!) I quickly discovered how much fun it is, and I can’t believe I have never attempted to play it before. If you didn’t know already, DnD is a game centered on character and world-building by each player, and I happen to love creating original characters. 

In our morning DnD session, Sai explained some game mechanics, such as spell casting, to new players (thank you again, Sai, for being so patient), and we finished creating our characters. My favorite has to be Eduardo’s character, Ian, based on our amazing GCSU TA Ian (Hi Ian, if you are reading this!). This DnD Ian is maxed out in charisma and high in wisdom and dexterity. However, Eduardo expresses his disappointment in being unable to max out all of his statistics to match the capabilities of the IRL Ian. 

In our post-lunch session, our Dungeon Masters, Darnell and Sour, interviewed each of the players to gather information on the characters for world-building. That took quite a while so let’s fast forward to the SSP Ted Talks we had this afternoon! I thought the Ted Talks would be quite formal and academic, but it turned out to be very entertaining and lighthearted. My favorite talks included Sai’s condiment tier list (although honey deserved higher than B tier), Andria’s talk on “What would happen if you fill our solar system until Jupiter with soup?” and Jasmine’s talk on Girl Math (featuring Girl Math PSet). I regret not giving a Ted Talk myself, looking back on how much fun we had. My Ted Talk topic would’ve been on the grocery store company Albertsons, which apparently NO ONE (except for Aditya, thank you, Aditya!) in GCSU SSP knows about. 

After the Ted Talks, we played some more DnD (finally getting to the lore). I think I will end my blog post here as I need to finish my PSet. It is currently 8:18 pm, and I still need to finish my Python code for Ninja Fruit Slicing. Thank you for reading!

-Sara

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My day started with… well it started with sleeping until 9:30 a.m., which is not what you get on a typical SSP day. What made today different from others is we had our first TA lecture. Where they can decide what they want to talk about. Our amazing TA, Colin,  gave a lecture on Nusantara, which is an imaginary world that he created based on the game Dungeons and Dragons and Indonesian mythology.  I was amazed by his creativity. He was able to create a massive world with different elements and he made up so many fascinating stories behind it. I was also amazed by how there is another side of him that’s so interesting outside of academia. You guys should check it out! https://www.worldanvil.com/w/nusantara-yudhistira-gs/followers. We also had a college roundtable by the TAs. They shared their experience of applying to college and college life. 

After an HOUR-LONG nap, I went to CHAS to work on my method part of the final report, and my blog of course, with group 6 and my group. I really liked that we got to work together a lot, because it’s just so amazing to work with people in SSP! Although it’s the part for individual work, we discussed problems and solutions, and I do feel like I’m learning and growing. And because this is the part to tell what we’ve done for the project, it brought back so many memories. It’s hard to believe that we are one step away from finishing our wet lab and also very close to the end of the program.

After dinner, we had an ICE CREAM SOCIAL and movie night, which is one of my many favorite parts of SSP. It’s always so fun to just start a random conversation and share our stories. It’s amazing that we always have so much to talk about! We watched Inception today, to describe my feeling in one word, WOW! A quote from Brian:” this movie is life changing”. My mind is so blown up, I’m officially a fan of Chirstopher Nolan now! An intense discussion was followed by the contradictory ending of the movie. I definitely did not go back to my dorm at 10:59  

Hi! I’m Kevin, a rising senior at Venice High School in Los Angeles, California. I love hanging out with friends, playing soccer, and watching TV shows. I’m always fascinated by science, it’s just amazing to use science to explain everything in our life and use it to solve problems. The experience in SSP is a dream come true for me because I get to do hands-on research as early as in high school, and meet all other amazing participants!

The post SSP is Like a Dream first appeared on SSP International.