It was 8:29 AM. I was happily dreaming about going fishing with my cat, Luna, until there was incoming missile strike (aka my iPhone alarm 🚨). Well, not really, but after hitting snooze one too many times, I was sprinting to the Sommers-Bausch Observatory (SBO) like my life depended on it. Waking up in the morning is just about the scariest part of SSP, because you don’t know if you overslept until it’s too late. Thankfully, I came in the door with seconds to spare, and I wasn’t welcomed with a clap of shame.
For the morning lecture, Dr. D talked about the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). One would think that since gravitational waves are so big, they would be easy to detect, but the LIGO instruments were way bigger and more sensitive than I could’ve ever imagined. It was interesting to see how multiple pendulums had to be used in order to negate the Earth’s seismic activity on the laser measuring the warping distance due to the gravitational waves to an accuracy within 1/10000th of the diameter of a proton.
At around 10:30, Dr. D let us out early to go work on assignments, so I went to the C4C to get a late breakfast totally worked on my P-set like a responsible SSPer. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, so after eating I went to bed; after all, this is the Summer Sleeping Program. I woke up for the second time at 1:10 PM and sprinted yet again to the SBO to listen to Dr. F’s lecture on the new James Webb Space Telescope images. While we were waiting, everyone sang Happy Birthday to Marcus (he tried to keep it a secret) but people found out with the birthday Question Of the Day earlier in the week. After the lecture, we headed back to Kitt West to sing a more proper happy birthday and eat cookies that Marcus’ parents had brought. They were all gone within 10 minutes.
Marcus overseeing a heated chess match on his birthday:
After the birthday celebration, everyone went back to their rooms and got dressed for dinner. My group was scheduled to sit at Ms. Bana’s dinner table tonight, but she was busy getting food for Stephanie. So, while she was gone, we reverted back to our normal state: screenagers.
Just kidding!
After dinner, we sat and kept Stephanie company while she ate pho (which looked SO good 😋), and then we had our group meetings, in which I got a stunning picture of our TA ✨Richard’s celestial body!!✨ After all, he did ask if we had completed that goal for the sticker chart. (we also came to a consensus that 1998 RO4 is the best asteroid 💯)
Truly majestic.
After the meeting, everyone went to the SBO to grind out P-sets. One of our TA’s, Laura, even showed us how to do imaginary complex high-level math on the whiteboard. Her formulas looked a little suspicious though. 🤔
Thankfully, Lana and I made some corrections 🙂
Much better.
After desecrating the whole Chikorita clan (Among Us, Pokemon, and the Potato Chikorita), I could finally rest easy and go back to my dorm to sleep, awaiting the disaster in store for me at 8:30 AM the next morning.
Also Ben is secretly a hippo.
My name is Gustavo, but you can call me Goose (breaking bad reference). I enjoy playing piano, fishing, robotics, and cooking in my free time. I’m from Austin, Texas, located in the US of A. Emily is one of my friends at SSP. Yeehaw!
