Ah yes, OPEN HOUSE. The fun day where participants and (some of) their families come to visit the campus and interact with all the amazing folks here at SSP. So let me give you a brief yet comprehensive runthrough of today, one of the most important days of the SSP experience.
The IMU (Indiana Memorial Union) was the destination for lunch- sandwiches and chips were served. This was complemented by a few of us going to starbucks and I had a cappuccino for the first time, which was fun. We had our college roundtable with representatives from Caltech and Harvey Mudd College, with catchy presentations and guidance to take us all through the tedious process which awaits us after SSP’s over. We had TA talks on college life and a lot of us had questions on majors, social life, and the balance we have to find once in college. This was very interactive and resolved a lot of doubts in my mind. Then came the trivia contest, having different categories and different types of questions, from literature to science to pop culture, ending in a final jeopardy where my team wagered all of its points (not at all because we were last and had nothing to lose). We thankfully know our TAs well and could name all their cats’ names pushing us one place up (sorry Team Shreyan, the game’s the game). We then headed back to Goodbody after a bittersweet goodbye with (almost Dr.) John, heading off back to medical school.
Following arrival back at Goodbody, I frantically looked for my suit, pulling out all my shirts and pants just to find it hidden behind all my jeans. We then got dripped out , as Faris says, with everyone in the boys’ floor watching youtube videos to get their ties tied. We set off back to the IMU to eat dinner, which was…. different to say the least. The sides were good but the jackfruit was questionable. We cracked lots of jokes and moved on to the introduction of the faculty to the parents. It was filled with well deserved incessant clapping, introducing all the TAs, Mr. Chen, who is the best site director, and a few words by Dr.H which touched all of our hearts, to say nonetheless. We then moved on to the guest speaker talk by a very cool SSP alum and scientist, Dr. Weiss, who shared his very very cool life stories, meeting leaders of the science world throughout his career and a talk on sex determination in animals. It just feels amazing that we have joined this lifelong community of amazing people who have and will be succeeding in whatever field they enter into. The inspirational talk, I believe, impacted all of us on different levels. Now, I’m back here on the third floor of Goodbody, writing this blog in the midst of rap battles by the other guys, definitely happy about one of the most memorable days of my life.
35 tickets to Minions: Rise of Gru please
-Vishnu
Hi everyone, I’m Vishnu, a rising senior from Bangalore, India. I love neuroscience and math, planning to be a computational neuroscientist in the future. Apart from that, I like to dance (specifically the classical dance of Bharatantyam) and hanging out with different kinds of people.
