Sunday, July 28, 2024
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To begin my penultimate week here with SPS, I worked from ACP once again. I successfully finished the programming portion of my spectral analysis work. I, of course, celebrated with the typical loss to Charlotte in bananagrams and for good measure tacked on a Scrabble loss as well. The evening wound down with a game of Catan. Shocker! I lost that one too.
Tuesday the interns and I schlepped up to ACP Maryland for our tour of AIP’s Neils Bohr Library. We got to see the recently renovated vault and cold room (though it was quite temperate inside) as well as some absurdly difficult librarian-made archive trivia. If you know what "red rot” is, you would’ve been in the right place. I, was not. We finished the night with yet another intern Bachelorette watch party. This show is absurd but I will miss watching it with everyone.
The next day I commuted to STScI in Baltimore one more time. I will miss my discussions with Dr. Kumari. Things I will not miss include: Amtrak delays, bus delays, Metro delays, and Uber delays. Dr. Kumari and I went over some of my slides and dissected some of the spectral work I’d been doing. I hurried back to DC to join Charles, Johnny, and Piper for bottomless wings at Buffalo Wild Wings. To my full stomach’s protest, this was followed by some intern spikeball. I think I’ve done an excellent job of converting the entire intern cohort into adept spikeball players this summer. To close the night off, a group of us watched the movie Whiplash.
Thursday I worked on my symposium slides for a bit at ACP before the Intern Appreciation lunch (thank you SPS). The day was overtaken with a sprawling (and often contentious) debate regarding whether Star Wars could be considered “camp”. After considerable slandering, voice levels which probably don’t belong in a professional office setting, and several consults with ChatGPT, a shaky compromise was reached. Kaden, Johnny, Collins, and I then made the pilgrimage to Ben’s Chili Bowl. Later, a group of us rallied for a night out, only to discover upon walking all the way there that Brynn had forgotten her ID. Please get an actual wallet Brynn.
Weeks end brought the coolest part of the summer, which was our tour of NASA Goddard by Dr. Rob Peter (Director of Astrophysics at Goddard). We got to see the Hubble Operations Center (flagship telescope, no biggie), the Osiris-REX chemistry lab (asteroid analysis), and the LISA development lab (next-gen gravitational wave detector). The piece de resistance, the cherry on top, the icing on the cake, was that we got to see the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope being built in the clean room. For those who may not know, Roman is the next big NASA flagship telescope to follow in Hubble and James Webb’s footsteps. It was indescribably cool. Shoutout Charles for organizing everything. We then watched Mamma Mia.
Saturday morning a bunch of us went to bottomless brunch as the start of our last hurrah weekend. Let’s just say, it was a bad day to be a mimosa. Or chicken and bubble waffles. Or sushi. Or sangria. Or a bento box. Point is, we reveled in gluttony and left with spirits high and bellies full. Kaden, Johnny, Charlotte and I played some delirious and talentless basketball before meeting with the rest of the group to head for the Air and Space museum. Slumber claimed me for the remainder of the day.
Sunday was the main event. The big show. The moment everyone has been waiting for. INTERN OLYMPICS. After watching some actual Olympic fencing to get amped, we gathered for the opening ceremonies and torch lighting. You may be wondering, “what countries participated?”. The answer, would be none of course (you think we could convince people to take this seriously?). “Countries” included Flint (Muji, Johnny, and Kai), Wolf Nation (Reidyn, Charles, and Collins, not even worth explaining the name), Ohio (Charlotte, Sonja, and myself, best team no question), and a 4th team which I maybe shouldn’t name here (Brynn, Maia, and Kaden).
For those curious, the Olympic Theme on Spotify is 1:02 minutes. This is far too short to fill 15 minutes, so I brilliantly improvised by queuing it 15 times in a row. I fear the blare of those trumpets will never leave me. Gamemaster Jenna led us through the shotgun tipoff, the walk to the National Mall, and the outdoor portion: relay races, spikeball, wheelbarrow races, frisbee tosses, and soccer. Following a short break, we reconvened for the indoor portion: uno, Mario kart, rage cage, and my personal favorite, hallway hurdles. If you can imagine the sound of thunderous footsteps, muffled laughter, and whispered times, you have some idea of what hallway hurdles entailed. Now picture bewildered passerbys, Charlotte tripping, and Kaden’s rabbit-like form, and you may begin to see why this was so incredible. Brynn’s team took gold overall, followed by Charles’ team, followed by mine (PODIUM), with Muji’s team pulling in fourth. It was a good day (this is an Ice Cube reference).
One week remains, but part of me already feels like I’m back home. This is nice because I feel that much closer to seeing my family and friends again. This is not nice because I am already envisioning goodbyes with everyone here. There should be a word for when things are great, sweet even, but it’s got like a bitter taste to it. I suggest "bittersweet".
Jaden Sicotte