Chelen Johnson
Honestly, I left [the 2013 AAS] a bit more in love with astronomy. I just plain had fun wandering and treated myself to time as a learner. It is not often we, educators, get to slide out of expert mode and into learner mode.
The most interesting thing [of my NITARP experience] was having to actually do research – researching articles & known information; looking up images in databases; doing photometry; making judgments on sources.
I think that the most surprising thing about it was how young everyone was! I absolutely did not expect that, maybe because the amateur community is so much older by comparison, and is mainly composed of retired people.
