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Summer Visit - 2019 - IDYL

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 IDYL team came to visit in July-August 2019. The 4 core team educators attended, plus 5 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] While learning so much was definitely a huge part of this trip, I would say the best thing about the trip would be the teamwork. To get all of us in the same room to work on this research and bounce ideas off of each other was truly amazing. It was great to have a team that was dedicated to the same goal and we were all passionate about what we would do with this newfound knowledge and research when it is all said and done.
  • [student:] To be an astronomer, you have to be intelligent (specifically in math and physics), hardworking and dedicated (because it takes a lot of time and you have to commit to actually get anything done), and they have to be creative. I think that was one thing that really stuck out to me that we talked about this week. Creativity can sometimes be seen as something that scientists don't use, but in reality, they are using it all the time. You have to be creative to come up with the solutions and ideas that scientists come up with every day.
  • My favorite thing about this kind of work is the ways that different people demonstrate mastery at different moments in ways that you can’t predict ahead of time.
  • [The best thing about the trip was] Meeting everyone on the team in person and working on astrophysics at Caltech! I have been looking forward to this week ever since I was accepted in the program. I can honestly say I learned astrophysics at Caltech with an outstanding astronomy research scientist. Not very many people can say that! Our team really came together as one and that made the whole process very enjoyable in my opinion.
  • Nothing really happened that I didn’t anticipate. I came in thinking it was going to be an intense busy week filled with learning astrophysics and the trip did not disappoint.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2019 - IDYL