Although it has only been two weeks since camp started, I feel like I’ve known so many of these people for a long time. From doing psets the day they are due to sitting through to break out singing to 2010s Nostalgia playlists, we’ve made so many memories and inside jokes that will stay with me long after the camp is over. Everyday, I learn something new about a state that someone is from (it’s common practice to buy $150 corsages for your prom date in New Jersey?).
This week, my observing team and I finally got to see the New Mexico sky on a clear night. It was one of the greatest sights I had ever seen. In addition to the speckles of stars, we also got to see the Milky Way and possibly a planet. Standing under the sky at 2 am in the morning listening to music is something that I will most definitely miss from SSP. Another one of my favorite moments of the week was going with my friends to the New Mexico Tech bookstore to buy matching “Talk Nerdy to Me” shirts. One lecture later, the rest of the class had gone on to buy more “Talk Nerdy to Me” shirts as well as the more “Miners Do It in the Dirt” shirts. By the end of the day, we all were sporting the wonky New Mexico Tech pun shirts.
Today, we had our first in-person guest lecture. Since the guest lecture started at 10:00 am, my roommate and I slept in until about 9:00 am. We then ate a quick breakfast and then we went to the guest lecture with Dr. Sverdrup. From making a firebomb from cotton to creating a banana hammer from liquid nitrogen, the guest lecture was filled with fascinating live experiments and demos. My favorite moment was when Dr. Anderson sucked in Sulfur Hexafluoride and immediately yelled “Dr. Reinstorf, you have failed me” in a deep Darth-Vader-esq voice. I also loved watching all the colorful light bulbs that Dr. Sverdrup had that lit up when next to the Tesla coil machine. After the lecture, we took an exciting trip to Walmart where we bought fruits. Afterwards, we came back, ate dinner, and worked on debugging the coding problem set for the remainder of the night.
Sincerely,
Sharon