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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:] 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.
  • [student:] I saw that you have to be patient with the sometimes tedious work you have to carry out and when things go wrong, but you also have to be creative to solve your problems and come up with ways to be efficient.
  • [student:] Real astronomy is hard. It’s a little bit of guessing, a lot of research and a whole lot of teamwork. [...] I knew that coming to Pasadena would mean that I would have amazing opportunities that I probably won’t get ever again, but I definitely wasn’t prepared for the amount of life changing science I would get handed.
  • [student:] JPL was so cool and the history behind it was fascinating, as well as getting to see models of telescopes, satellites, and the Mars Curiosity. It was very inspiring to see other scientists’ work and how science applies to real life, which has reinforced my decision to study science (most likely physics) in university, which will be very soon.
  • [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.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2015 - IC417