Summer "Visit" - 2020 - Spider Team

Quotes

• [the best thing about the week was] Being amazed, again, by the contributions of our students. We teachers are constantly urged to have students work in groups, but that so often fails in real life. Here in NITARP it works – just get out of their way and let them amaze you. Having said that, the best thing was the experience of being a student, of being in a cross-generational community of learning and discovery.
• Astronomers don’t look at the stars. They look at their computers. Not that that’s a bad thing.
• [student:] Some important qualities to have as an astronomer is patience, ambition, and open-mindedness. Working with tedious data becomes frustrating certain times especially when there are instances you mess things up. With the creative process being so up and down, it’s imperative to be patient during hard times and work through it, even when the results aren’t what you were expecting. Furthermore, with being open-minded, it’s primarily aimed at collaborations and feedback since someone might have different opinions on your research or questions on why you didn’t explore something. With that it’s important to take everything into consideration and keep working.
• [student:] Astronomers definitely have to be hard working and dedicated to their study. They have to be passionate about the data they are working with, and smart enough to understand it well. They also have to be good communicators, as it involves a lot of collaboration with peers. It’s also important that they are good at explaining their findings to the public, such as in a scientific journal.
• [student:] This experience changed the way I thought about astronomy research because I did not think it was as digital as it is. I did not think it was going to be as much computer work.

Related Teams

• Spider/Rebull