UNC Astro Blog Post Day 37

In the sweltering heat, the bus arrived right outside the Old West dorms, and all of us
collected our keys and hauled our overpacked luggage to our rooms, and I signed up to write this post. That was five weeks and three days ago.

Today felt like another typical day going to a 9 am lecture after waking up at 8:55 after missing five collective alarms between me and my roommate, Emma. Or it felt normal since we once again missed five
alarms before rushing out of bed at 8:55 am. This time it was not for a cosmic lecture or
OD code or quantum mechanics, but for the final exit survey.
We could hardly fathom that the 53-question long survey would be our last time in the
lecture space in Philips Hall, where we diligently took notes on stellar lectures on
galaxies and telescope and optics also the lecture hall; we fought sleep after lunch to
listen to as much as possible from an intriguing lecture. And wild wasps, too (yes! We
did fight wasps in the lecture hall, and we did win!). But I am happy to report we
persisted through the survey, with the delicious strawberries and blueberries we had for
breakfast (Thank you, Dr. Rosenthal!) regardless of how many times we saw the flash
message of, “the survey has been modified and has to be restarted….AGAIN!”

It was time to say the first of a series of goodbyes. This one was quite hard, personally,
after having spent hours and hours of computer lab time together laughing, crying, and
praying that the other one would not run out of battery before getting through problem
sets. The laptop from slot 30 stayed with me all through the way, the highs of letting me
play Cornfield Chase (from Interstellar) on repeat as we finished the OD report and the
lows of having 8 million tabs open with my USB drive missing in action. As I said
goodbye to #30, others said goodbye to #16, #28, and so many more.

It was a day of farewells, and it was time for us to honor the majestic Morehead
telescope and observatory, the very place we gawked at our asteroids, and my group
scared each other and other groups in the darkness of the dome (or at least attempted
to). To show our gratitude to the observatory, we raided the gift shop and found out that
astronauts eat dry freeze ice cream sandwiches, or at least that’s what the packaging
said on the “space ice cream sandwich” from the gift shop. Happy with our purchases of
“Lunar Sour Candy,” a space shuttle keychain, a miniature deck of cards and a whole lot
of stickers, we headed to lunch. Nostalgia got to us, and we had to explore the campus
thoroughly before we left; we had to get a beverage from the cafe right outside the
dorms. We did try one too many free samples not to visit the cafe one last time. I mean,
we definitely couldn’t stop there. After all, it was the last full day, and we had to get
Subway. Ah! What a lunch that was as some of us wrestled with a triple-sauce-filled
six-inch sub that threatened to splash with every bite. Oh! And did I mention we had to
survive a yellow jacket attack since apparently they also like Subway (I don’t blame
them).

Having ticked that off my list of things to do at SSP, it was then time for the talent show. I
was blown away as I heard magnificent melodies, 315 digits of pi, the capitals of
countries I had to google to check their existence. Every passing second was cherished,
and everyone was aware of the intangible perception of six weeks. From the second
week onwards, I felt like I had lived on campus with the same people for years, but time
still seemed to pass faster than we could take it all in. Now, that lesson on special
relativity made perfect sense!

Then it was time for pictures, the official final picture, and the pictures of previous groups
I saw daily as I opened my SSP application. The photoshoot transitioned to a nostalgic
“The Last Supper” (credits to our TA, Lucy), a final dinner sitting around a table having
had the most bizarre and deepest conversations around the cafeteria’s famous fries; my
table took a trip down memory lane list our favourite and least favourite SSP things.

Following this, the scenes began to shift faster and faster as we spent quality time with
ice cream, pizza pockets, movies, and karaoke. Yelling and scream singing “Country
Roads” and many others as we competitively slapped the table playing cards (yes, the
miniature deck), I reminisced on the times we did the same on our way back from every
field trip. UNC had become home with astrophysics SSP. We helped each other, by
which I mean trauma, bonded over syntax errors while debugging, and pushed each
other to be the best versions of ourselves, all in six short weeks (or in the five years it felt
like we had been there). Everyone affirmed that this would not be the end of SSP, simply
a new beginning. But it was hard to believe that nothing from these six weeks would be
different moving forward— moving on to more sleep every day. With the weight of
departure hanging heavy over us, most of us took this opportunity to engage in very
intellectual conversations and a very intellectually created sport of Squash-Minton
(squash against the dorm walls but with badminton equipment). As we switched out the
losing opponent in an infinite loop, and just for one more point as if that would be it, the
deciding point, we went on as long as we heard conversion coming from the lounge.
Intellectual curiosity overcoming SSP’s Squash-Minton team, we joined the timeless
conversation with our lovely TAs (definitely before it was “suggested” curfew time). After
all, conversations like these made SSP special and so hard to leave the next day.

Reminiscing,
-Vivi