By: Sarah B
It’s halfway through SSP, and I still haven’t observed my asteroid. My OD code is riddled with bugs, my observing requests are fruitless, and my brain feels like swiss cheese. How did I get here? Well, to start, I almost didn’t. My application was initially waitlisted, and just two hours after I was moved to the accepted list I was offered another summer opportunity. Suddenly, I had a decision to make on how to spend my summer, one that could affect my future career path greatly. At the beginning, the deliberation was hard. There were good “pros” on both sides, including the fact that my second opportunity came with more responsibility and independence, and that SSP was much closer to what I wanted to do in life (the other opportunity had to do with aviation systems and not necessarily aerospace). But as I debated with myself, the choice became clear. I had to choose SSP. It promised a welcoming environment full of people like me, fast-paced learning, interesting guest lectures, and lots of time for meeting new people and making friends. After withdrawing from my other opportunity, I formally enrolled in SSP and the rest is history.
SSP has been an amazing experience so far. I’ve made so many friends and learned so much about python, astronomy, observing, and a lot more. Since every day, we’re doing something new, I’ll give you a rundown of my day today.
Learning Block 1: Blaise Aguera y Arcas – “Neuroscience, AI, and the Future of Intelligence on Earth”
Our first learning block today is a guest lecture from Blaise Aguera y Arcas on neuroscience, ethics, and artificial intelligence. It’s fascinating, and probably my favorite guest lecture so far. Ethics and AI aren’t usually very interesting to me but this presentation keeps it engaging by somehow covering topics from ants to Alan Turing.
A demonstration of a neural net from our guest speaker today
Social Hour:
Today, our social hour was us sharing our favorite memes which Ms. M told us to have yesterday, which I promptly forgot about. Luckily, the rest of my group was equally unprepared, so we scrounged around our computers to see what we had saved. My group shared some laughs over pset memes, absurd videos from La France a un incroyable talent, and, of course, Squeezy Jibbs.
One of my favorite memes to come out of the SSP discord, courtesy of Saraliba
Break:
During my 5 hour break between SSP zooms, I used my pset-less night to go to the grocery store, which is what passes for fun now. I worked on this blog, and then got down to business trying to locate my asteroid.
Learning Block 2:
I started off the break working on my orbit determination code #2, which required me to find the orbital elements that we will later need to find the actual orbit of our asteroid. It turned out to be much more difficult than expected, so I decided to work on this blog instead. My groupmate Sunny and I confirmed with Dr. F that the very small grey dot in our astro images was indeed our asteroid (Yay!!), so we got to add another check to our progress chart. After a rousing game of quizlet trivia, we went back to work and I hammered away at the second orbit determination code pset until the end of SSP for the day (technically the next day).
Today was a pretty typical SSP day, filled with hard work and laughter. I’ve had so much fun so far, and learned so much. I’m very excited for the next 3 weeks.
About Me
Hi! My name’s Sarah and I’m a rising senior at New Trier High School in the Chicagoland area. I enjoy engineering and improv comedy, and if I’m not doing SSP work, I’m reading science fiction or the newest XKCD comic (hence the title). I’m looking forward to the rest of SSP!
