17.95%

It’s the end of the first week! 7 days done, 32 days to go :’) (well, technically 31 days to go, since I’m writing this pretty late (sorry Eric!))

Saturday, Day 7, started with a Python lecture in the morning with Dr. Bauer. Then we had the highlight of my week: the NMT trip (the NMTrip??) to Walmart! Alas, the plan to buy scooters and a wagon to make a train (the NMTrain???) fell through, but I walked away from Walmart with GoGo Squeez’s, strawberry Poptarts, and other necessities. The weather here during monsoon season has been very inconsistent, but it’s comforting (?) to know that Walmart is the same everywhere.

The pset work never stops, but the due date for Astro Pset 2 got moved to Monday! (It almost brought a tear to my eye.) After dinner, people split apart to work on psets and play soccer and frisbee. There were also a couple of poker games and an origami/puzzle/coloring/hexaflexagon group inside of the dorms. 

From left to right: Sriram, Andrew, and I working on Python Pset 2 in Speare

After a couple more hours of working on psets, Saturday was truly over. All in all, a very fun way to end the first week.

It’s hard to believe that we’re 17.95% (basically 20% !!!) done with SSP. Time at NMT (the NMTime????) seems to pass both more slowly and more quickly than normal. I’m usually ridiculously busy because there’s always another pset to finish, so I don’t have much time to stop, take a step back, and reflect. It often feels like SSP is an isolated little bubble, and sometimes in between discussing Problem 3b on Astro 2 and the benefits of plastic-eating megasharks, I forget about how amazing it is to be here in the first place. It’s absolutely crazy to think about how all 36 of us, each with widely different backgrounds and experiences, have ended up in Socorro, New Mexico.

SSP is already 17.95% over, but maybe a better title for this post is 82.05%. Our SSP experiences aren’t just 17.95% over; we still have 82.05% to go, and I’ll be trying to appreciate the remaining NMTime as much as I can.

About me: Hi! I’m Yujean S., and I’m a rising senior from Georgia. I like the web serial Worm, and the Korean show The Genius, and code that works on the first run. At my high school, I play soccer and clarinet.