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Summer Visit - 2019 - Dust Mights

The summer visit to Caltech is 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 Dust Mights team came to visit in July 2019. The 4 core team educators attended, plus 5 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] The most surprising thing for me was the fact that NITARP is truly, to my knowledge, a great example of an actual research opportunity. I say this because with every other school-based trip I’ve done, there’s always been a strict itinerary that told us where we would learn, what we would learn, who we would learn with, etc. But, NITARP was different than those other trips in a way where I felt more independent which, again to my knowledge, is a perfect representation of a real research opportunity.
  • [student:] The best part of the trip was just the full experience that it brought. Getting to sit in a room and feel like I was contributing something to humanity's knowledge was just so unique.
  • We were all so different from each other, yet all so open to each other, all so open to making mistakes in front of each other, all so open to the messiness of true learning in front of each other and our kids. This was important and interesting.
  • [student:] Astronomy is such an interesting field, and the people that are interested in it are always devoted and incredibly kind.
  • [student:] This completely changed my view of astronomy and astronomers because I had this unrealistic idea that they just sat in an observatory all day looking at planets and stars and wrote down what they found, published it, and called it a day.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2019 - Dust Mights