Entering the penultimate week of SSP, we’ve been bombarded by a hail of ‘lasts’: the last wet lab, last dorm meeting, and so on. Yet oddly enough, even as closing day rapidly approaches, week five still seems eerily reminiscent of the earlier weeks, though lab groups are now scrambling to churn out work and the final report deadline is looming. I guess skipping breakfast, scrambling to the Armory, and eating sushi for lunch has become my banal routine, and, as a result, I’m having trouble comprehending the speed with which the past month has gone by.
Amid these difficult questions, today’s field trip offered a reprieve for PUR-B.
The day started bright and early. The 7:20 am bus time transformed the usual party coach bus into a sleeper train. As rows upon rows of greenhouses and a glass-steel complex that rivaled Argonne appeared over the tree line, we got our first glimpse of Corteva’s global headquarters. Naturally, I was impressed. Expectations were high, and we were excited to tour the industrial labs, explore the hulking greenhouses, and encounter the sophisticated machines, similar to the ones at Inari except larger and even more expensive. While the experience was slightly underwhelming in the sense that the tour was mostly a lap through Corteva’s hallways, with the occasional smartboard mini-game strategically placed along the route, the presentations and tour were substantive and offered a macro-view of the pesticide development process, which was honestly pretty interesting.
Afterward, we boarded the bus and drove to the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, which also happens to be the largest children’s museum in the world. I was initially fazed by the streams of running children (who kind of reminded me of the wriggling hydrogen atoms during energy minimization in MOE), the cacophony of crying infants, and the general chaos all around; however, I soon came to appreciate this unusual experience, from almost overloading an elevator’s carrying capacity to watching talented SSP-artists draw portraits of Dr. Das. To be honest, I can’t put describe museum trip into a short blog post. Here’s a one-sentence summary instead: SSPers go feral and try taking group pictures in cramped and crowded spaces.
This was a fun final field trip.
Hello! I’m Gavin, and I’m a rising senior at Woodbury High School in Minnesota. In my spare time, I enjoy astrophotography, trying new foods, and hiking.
