After struggling to sleep last night, I groggily awoke to my alarm ringing at 8 am. I stopped it, but being too tired to get up, I continued my slumber until my second alarm started blaring. The urging of my phone and my roommate were enough to finally drive me to my feet and go robotically brush my teeth. There were some suspicious little bugs in one of the sinks, so I avoided that one.
It was drizzling a bit outside, so I put on tennis shoes and brought my umbrella, but I didn’t think much of it. Little did I know what was to come… I hurriedly made my way to the morning lecture along with all the other groggy SSP Silly Sleepy People™. I sat down in my chair, blinked, and the lecture seemed to have ended. My brain was having trouble forming thoughts, so I just collapsed at my table whilst my friends tried dragging me to workshop. After begrudgingly opening the laptop, I was able to lock in and implement differential corrections (basically the “final boss”) to our orbit determination code. It worked really well, decreasing the (root-mean-square) average deviation of our predicted right ascensions and declinations from the observed ones by a whole order of magnitude! Unfortunately… It also caused our calculated orbital elements to be massively magnified.
Thereafter we meandered the rainy campus on our way to lunch. As we were finishing up our meals, our phones blared with flash flood warnings, and we looked outside to see an inhospitable torrent of rain and thunder. Thankfully, our afternoon lectures were delayed, and the faculty offered to drive us from the dining hall to minimize the soakage. But when they finally arrived with the cars, the rain had almost entirely subsided, rendering it a slightly unnecessary (though appreciated) effort.
After regrouping, we had two lectures from the TAs Lucy and Junu, and both were very interesting. Lucy showcased some fascinating and less well-known examples of astronomy in history, and Junu guided us on a thought-provoking discussion on ethics in astronomy. Then we had some free time where I rehearsed singing with our lil choir group in preparation for the talent show. That was followed by our usual semiformal dinner, and afterwards we went to workshop to continue working on our OD (orbit determination) report. In that time, I was able to debug and perfect differential correction, utilizing all 5 of our observations instead of just 3 and greatly improving the accuracy and precision of our results.
After working on our report for a bit, it was time to head back to the dorms and sleep. Unfortunately, I had a nasty surprise awaiting me… When approaching my room, I was greeted with three SSPers huddled together standing six feet away from a bug at my door. They were scared for their life, somehow thinking it was a wasp, but it was just a small little beetle trying to crawl into my room. I swiftly dealt with it. I thought that was the end of it, but when I opened the door, I was greeted by the most horrific sight imaginable. There were millions of insects flying in the air and swarming the ground, all ready to assault me. Okay maybe it wasn’t that bad, but it sure felt like it; there were at least two hundred ants flying in the air and covering every square foot of floor.
(Caption: Despite their poses, they, in fact, did not contribute to the eradication of the beetle)
Thankfully, two TAs, Sonya and Junu, were still awake and came to our rescue! They brought weaponry, and we made a valiant effort to exterminate the bugs, killing them with a special dish soap concoction and also by plain smackage via broom or shoe. Slowly but surely, the bugs’ numbers dwindled, but alas, when we thought we had got them all, more continued to spawn—seemingly—out of the wood. Thus, we had to run the backup plan, which was to call Dr. Rosenthal, the site director, to get us new rooms. Miraculously, though it was 3 am, Dr. Rosenthal was still awake and came over save us. It took a bit of calling other staff and negotiating, but at the very-not-late-at-all time of 4 am, I finally got a safe room that wasn’t teeming with bugs possessing murderous intent. The shower that night felt so good. I will be forever grateful for you, Dr. Rosenthal, Sonya, and Junu for still being available and at our service at such late hours <3. Also thanks—I guess—to the onlookers who lay witness to our uninhabitable room and bid us their best wishes.
Postscript: There’s only so few days left here; I will cherish them the best I can. I have met the most interesting and wonderful and intelligent and kind and fun people here that I’ve ever met, and I’ve found so many that are similar to me (and even my clone!). We’ve been able to bond so strongly in our ephemeral time here; it feels like I’ve known some of the people here for years. Though this is just a transient moment in our lives, (SSSSSSS)SSP (silly sleeeepy smart stacked soupy (and sometimes sick) super summer science program) is an experience that none of us will ever forget.
Fighting bugs and demons—and the thought that I may never see some of these people ever again,
-Eve ( T_T)＼(^-^ )
