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Summer Visit - 2015 - IC417

The summer visit to Caltech is 3-4 days long and is the only time during the year of work when all the participants on the team come together in person to work intensively on the data. Generally, each educator may bring up to two students to the summer visit that are paid for by NITARP, and they may raise funds to bring two more. The teams work at Caltech; the summer visit typically includes a half-day tour of JPL, which is a favorite site for group photos. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The IC417 team came to visit in June 2015. The core team educators attended, plus 8 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] This experience definitely changed the way I thought about astronomy. I used to think of astronomy as a pretty limited field, but now I see that there are so many ways to connect my love for space and astronomy with engineering, spacecrafts, computer science and even writing. Before this experience I thought that the day to day routine of an astronomer was something I was not too interested in, but seeing the variety in jobs that astronomers can have completely changed my outlook.
  • [student:] The best thing about this trip was when Luisa was presenting a slide show to us and said, “Remember. There is no answer in the back of the book. This has never been done before. So do it right.” It really opened my eyes as to the immense amount of responsibility and trust was being put on us high school kids. I’m barely halfway through my educational career and there has never been a time where someone, somewhere, didn’t have a cheat sheet or answer code. It’s completely humbling and uplifting to have to do your own work, with the knowledge that you are in a building where people do it every day and love it.
  • [student:] This has for sure changed what I thought about astronomy, especially engineering. I respect what they do a lot more because none of it is easy. And I learned that you can’t have astronomy without the engineers to help them get them where they want to go.
  • I was impressed by the many different paths that a career in astronomy can take, from engineering to PR jobs to theoretical science.
  • [student:] The best thing about this trip was getting out in the real world. I feel like I have such an advantage over my classmates now because I have done this. I know what I can do and that will just make growing up so much easier/more exciting by having an idea of what I can do.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2015 - IC417