Hi this is Andrew and I’M 17 NOW!! I’m starting this blog post at 11 PM on July 5th. There is a very heavy thunderstorm outside, but it’s actually quite calming hearing the rain while inside the dorm. There’s like rain predicted everyday for another week, so we won’t be able to observe for a long time.
But let’s start the blog on yesterday, July 4th. After a day of lectures on optics and orbital determination, I went to the computer lab to work on my data reduction. Currently, our team, named the Wacky Wiggling Worms (the best and longest team name, with me, Michael, and Taja), is working on analyzing the pictures we took in a week before. Our team has a bittersweet relationship with our asteroid — although it is like 2 times as dim compared to other teams’ asteroids and annoying to track, we’re up for the challenge! I was surprised that there were a lot of fireworks throughout the night; it seemed that the entire town of Milledgeville was celebrating the eve of my birthday! But while I was working on the asteroid data, Dr. Ice told everyone to meet in the main classroom. Out of nowhere, Ian brought in a huge cupcake cake (a cake made up of many cupcakes as a base with frosting over them), and we celebrated my birthday a day early! Everyone sang Happy Birthday MULTIPLE TIMES (it is tradition to sing the happy birthday song as many times as how old one is turning).
After that Ian invited us to go to the observatory to take some cool pictures! I went to observe with Kaan and Michael and we got absolutely fantastic pictures of the Whirlpool Galaxy! It was too cloudy though for other objects like the Ring Nebula. And I did not attempt to give Michael frostbite with compressed air, that is disinformation; it was actually the other way around. I attached the stacked image below. Hopefully we can observe more cool things when the clouds go away! Afterwards I went to sleep around 1 AM after a few matches of Brawl Stars (I am NOT addicted to that game).
Fast forward to the morning of July 5th, I woke up around 8:20 AM, which is typical for me. I had the most satisfying and nutritious meal for breakfast — a cup of instant noodles and an energy drink.
After getting ready, I headed towards the lecture hall at around 8:50 AM to come across a beautiful birthday message on the whiteboard! After a few more rounds of Happy Birthday songs, we began a normal morning of lectures. It truly is amazing how supportive the SSP community is!!
After our lectures, it was College & Career Day! To start off, we wore our semi-formal clothes and had a scrumptious lunch at a fancy auditorium. I enjoyed the potatoes and the chicken wrap. Through Zoom, we listened to admission officers from Caltech and Harvey Mudd about student life at the colleges and the application process. It was very informative as we could ask questions to the admission officers directly. (PS to all AO’s: it would be a nice birthday gift to give me admission to your college 😉)
I sat with Pranav, Kaan, Jean, Delal, Daniela, and Viktoriia for lunch. Jean asked the most important questions, such as would you rather live eternally, stop time, or travel back into the past. I also learned some questionable Turkish from Kaan.
Then Ms. Belote came to give a speech about college admissions.
Here’s the main highlight:
YOU WILL GET INTO A GOOD COLLEGE.
And say that over and over again for 10 times.
I thought her speech was very reassuring because everyone was a little nervous going into the college admissions process. We got this!! Let’s put that worry elsewhere. We headed back to the dorms after lunch.
Finally, we had dinner around 5 PM. Today was the fanciest dinner by far; the grilled broccolini and chicken was delicious. We wore even fancier clothes than dinner. After another Happy Birthday, we all settled down in groups of 5. An admissions officer from GCSU came down and gave a speech on student life and the admissions process at the college. Then we listened to a speech about life. Life is not linear, and a growth mindset is important in overcoming challenges and achieving success and happiness with your life. I also sat with Evan the GOAT, and I mowed down some cake.
Afterwards we headed back to the dorms. Sour delivered a stunning kazoo performance of Happy Birthday at my dorm door. We went back to the classrooms around 8:30 PM to work on our problem sets. I went back around 11 PM to where I am now.
It’s crazy that SSP is already half over. Although SSP felt a little overwhelming at the beginning (Lagrangian mechanics left me in a state of bewilderment), I’ve gotten used to this amazing and supportive community. I’ve learned so much through collaboration with my peers, and I’m so excited for what’s to come. I heard that since our dark sky viewing was canceled due to rain, we are going to WALMART for an HOUR 30 MINUTES tomorrow!! Anyways it’s 1:23 AM now so I will wrap it up here. Night!
Afternote: Nevermind, the thunderstorms are absolutely terrifying. This is probably the most intense thunderstorm I’ve ever witnessed, and both my suitemates (Pranav and Kaan) were woken up by the thunder. The lightning is striking very close by, I swear it hit our building one time. Crazy
-Andrew N
