Given the Monday blues that I woke up with after a hard (not) day’s of work yesterday, wishing I could go back to the dance studio where Alison, Elisa, and I had hashed out the choreography of “We’re All in this Together” from seminal classic High School Musical far from the cloud of worry that PSETs hang over our heads, this Monday was nothing like a normal high school Monday. First off, I only had three hours of real class as opposed to eight hours. Second, it was only a five minute walk to SBO as opposed to the daily 45-minute drive to my school back at home. Third, my Dad wasn’t there to greet me with a plate of plain toast and ask if I wanted butter or peanut butter this morning (sorry Dad, I ended up getting a breakfast burrito instead of toast today, but it’s only because nothing could ever compare to your toast).
This officially marks a full week at SSP. I have already devoted 40% of my waking hours to grinding out work in the computer lab with my fellow teammates (shoutout to Evan and Jay, the other two-thirds of Team Kings Canyon) surrounded by the chatter of other groups arguing over their three different answers, and I still have 768 hours here. Sure 768 sounds like a lot, but it really doesn’t feel like it. Considering I’ve only known these people for less than a relevant fraction of my life, it feels like I’ve known them for years. From looking to the right and being met with a Desmos drawing of Evan’s face to looking to the left and seeing a web of Desmos equations on Evan’s screen as he works out a problem that most likely doesn’t need that many calculations, I’ve had more belly-laugh-out-loud moments in this last week than probably the last five years of my life. Despite the challenges that we face from the PSETs, I’m sort of grateful for them. It gives us a reason to be in the computer lab and ask each other questions and interact with each other and enjoy the general chaos that ensues when you group together high-energy objects and anticipate the second Big Bang.
Normally, we have two three-hour lectures; one in the morning, and one in the afternoon, as I’m sure previous blog posts have detailed, but today, Dr.Domingue’s lecture was woefully replaced by a guest speaker– I say woefully, and in reality, it was fantastical and scratched every itch left by the crime mystery lover in me (Criminal Minds, Bones, NCIS, CSI…). We welcomed Jim Reed from Necrosearch, a voluntary team of scientific specialists who work together with the law enforcement to locate and analyze corpses, to the observatory today. In the early days of Necrosearch, the team was involved with convicting Ted Bundy (if you don’t know who Ted Bundy is, you either need to peek out from the rock you are living under or need to watch that one Zac Efron movie). Reed himself has been face-to-face with serial murderers like Scott Kimball, a la Silence of the Lambs Hannibal Lecter or David Rossi with Thomas Yates. Necrosearch includes a multitude of scientific fields from criminology to geology to serology to psychology to… whatever other “-ologies” there are. Oh- right- also entomology. We got to see a wonderfully horrible photo of a decomposing corpse covered in a shell of maggots. Disgusting as it may be, it’s one of the most accurate ways to date death. Throughout the talk, Reed discussed the techniques they use while exhuming a body, and recounted cases that he had worked on – so-called “dragons” that he had slayed.
We learned a lot from Reed, including his extreme dislike of psychics and paranormal experts- all charlatans as he reminded us at least five times throughout the hour presentation. Thanks Reed, I no longer give those Instagram posts that analyze the zodiac signs a second look. Also, we’ve all heard that planting endangered species in a layer above a corpse would prevent people from digging in that area (@Dragos). Smart idea, but they have ways to get around that now, so all future murderers should search for another loophole (or maybe just use your words instead of killing? I’ve heard that killing people doesn’t solve problems, it just makes them dead). For those that didn’t get the pleasure of meeting Reed, I’ll end this part with some words of wisdom he offered, “There are some advantages to getting old and dying.”
Let’s just say I would never be given license to talk so freely about murder at school. As I ponder the last 768 hours that I have here (it’s actually probably around 752 now by the time I’m done writing this), all I can tell myself is that there will be more late nights shining flashlights at stars with Jay, more adulting challenges with Miranda (laundry? check.), more Troy/Gabriella duets with Ameera, more eraser shavings from redoing questions on PSETs, and more laughs to be had. Okay, gotta go work on PSET 3 now. Bye 🙂
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About me:
Hello to whoever may be reading this! I’m Milenka, a rising senior from suburban New Jersey. If you ask my friends here, you’d probably get “theater kid” as your first description, and after that… honestly I don’t know. I’ve always loved looking at the stars, but in school, math is my favorite subject, along with physics. The integral is the greatest invention of all time; if the integral had a fan club, I would probably be the president of it.
