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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

  • 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:] This experience significantly changed the way I think of astronomers. Before going to Caltech and meeting Varoujan and Luisa, I believed astronomers needed to know everything and could not get anything wrong. However, after listening to many astronomers discuss their jobs, I learned that many times this is not the case. Astronomers often do not know the answers to some of their biggest questions and will sometimes think of theories that are incorrect. However, after realizing this, my respect for astronomers has only increased. Astronomers need to have the willpower to continue to try to solve a problem and the intelligence to discover what they do not know.
  • [student:] A good deal of the information was difficult to process despite relearning it each day. However, it was extremely rewarding when I finally did begin to understand—which was another thing that surprised me. *I* understood college-level astronomy.
  • [student:] Even though I had to redo my work over 10 times, this still strengthened my skills and provided me extreme happiness in my efforts. I did receive a lot of help from both the students and the teachers. I also provided this same amount of health back to team members. Everyone was a big help rather than just one person.
  • [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.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN