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Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN

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 HIPS AGN team came to visit in June 2016. The core team educators attended, plus 8 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] Messing up is a huge part of being anything in the sciences. There might be times where you will get it the first time, but that only means you are lucky.
  • I wasn’t expecting as many “well, let’s try this” side roads. I thought the process would be more linear, but this felt more authentic somehow. You don’t know the answer, and you don’t have a clear roadmap for finding the answer, but you have some background and can use that to start reaching towards an answer.
  • [student:] I think this will be a common answer, but meeting with the rest of the team was an amazing experience that I know made us more open to sharing ideas with each other, enthusiastic about the work we're doing, and willing to put in effort to learn about/advance the project. The kind of collaboration possible with all of us in one room together was much better than anything online. It allowed us to fire out ideas easily, try different paths out at once, and work quickly.
  • [student:] This is the first time where I was able to be a part of a team where everyone had the same aspirations and motivations. There was no one who thought of themselves as the leader. Everyone looked at each other as equals and helped each other when it was needed.
  • [student:] The most surprising part of this experience was how easily everyone connected with each other. We are all different, but we somehow were able to become good friends and team members in a short amount of time. This same connection happened between the students and the teachers. We did not view them as teachers, but rather friends that we can trust and exchange help with.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN