My day started significantly earlier than usual: at 5:45 AM. With the weight of the OD report off our shoulders, my friends and I decided to go on an early morning walk to watch the sunrise.
We saw the end of the sunrise over the library, and, at around 6, proceeded down to the dining hall to get breakfast. However, it didn’t open until 7, so we continued to wander around campus.
We stopped by the stadium, and took this photo with the statue of the Tar Heel (which I just learned is some type of goat?). At this point, it was 6:45, and we were all feeling the repercussions of our minimal sleep, so Vivi and Cindy went back to the dorms after tasking Kira and I with acquiring pancakes for their breakfast. Kira and I, ever committed to every questionable idea we’ve ever had, pushed onwards and ultimately reached the dining hall at around 6:55.
While we waited for the dining hall to open, the Sun finally illuminated the whole sky, and we witnessed the morning golden hour over the back of Kenan Stadium. Finally, the dining hall opened, and we enjoyed breakfast for the first time in 35 days. I guess the breakfast selections must have changed between the first 2 days and now, because the pastry selection was so much better than I thought. They had everything bagels and cream cheese (which might be my favorite breakfast food) and legitimately wonderful croissants. I have to go again!
After stumbling back to the dorms in a tired daze (I genuinely do not remember this walk at all), I promptly fell asleep. At 1:18, Vivi’s alarm blared, and we both went through our usual morning routine (panicking, scrambling to brush our teeth and get dressed, and almost running to Phillips) to reach the lecture hall in time for our 1:30 PM lecture. We had guest lecturers from the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) who taught us how to model our asteroid’s orbit for 50 million years into the future. Because it is not possible to exactly predict what will happen over this time period, “clones” of the asteroids were introduced with slight perturbations. We coded our simulations, and left them to run over dinner. After heading to the dining hall for dinner, I returned to Phillips to check on my asteroid simulation, expecting to be about 40% finished. Instead, I was frozen at 7% because my Python kernel had crashed inside of Jupyter Notebook, and thus I had to restart the entire process. I hope by tomorrow morning I at least have some data!
Finally, we headed to the auditorium-style room for some trivia prepared by the TAs! Some of the lovely categories were Ikea or Cheese (which we could have gotten 4/5 in if we hadn’t switched our answers last minute) and Minecraft Ores in Grayscale (which was doomed from the beginning). On the final question, we wagered everything, and promptly lost everything as no group answered the question correctly. Ultimately, the group with the most conservative bet won, even though they were in the middle of the scoreboard for the entire game. Now, we are back in the dorms, and as I prepare for sleep on my final weekend of the program, I feel so immensely grateful for the opportunities I was provided here and the people I was fortunate enough to meet. Leaving is bittersweet, but I look forward to reuniting with everyone in the future (and watching The Summer I Turned Pretty season 3 when it releases)! I’m also realizing how little sleep I’m about to get — womp womp I guess!
-Emma B