NMSU Astro II: Day 34
In classic SSP fashion, the day started at midnight.
After pausing on the data analysis for our n-body simulations—programs that analyze how our asteroids will move through the solar system over millions of years—we left our code to run overnight and headed back to the dorms. Until curfew, we stayed in the dorm lobby chatting with TAs, watching Spider-Man, and playing cards.
Then, I went back to my dorm and packed a bit before heading to sleep.
A very, very short 5 hour nap later, the 29th officially started with the walk to Corbett and a penultimate breakfast at the high table. (The high table: the one long table in the dining hall. Meant to fit 18, but capable of hosting 22.) Breakfast was interspersed with some last minute talent show prep—poem and Taylor Swift parody writing.
Next up was a short lecture in Domenici, and then back to the Bio Annex for data analysis and slideshow making. Most of my time was spent making a few more animations, and of course, adding color palettes to my graphs (colorsys for the win).
Unfortunately, while trying to make a gif, a suspicious interface was downloaded onto my computer. After the subsequent half an hour of trying to get my computer to open a browser other than Yahoo, I was returned to Google Chrome (thanks, Jalen)!
Because of the exciting Yahoo virus encounter, I had to rush a bit to add my graph to my group’s slideshow. However, with some serious teamwork, we completed our final graphs, broke for lunch, and came back to practice before each group presented. Of course, there was a brief break for more talent show rehearsal between trial slide show runs. (We successfully memorized approximately ten percent of the parody we were singing.)
The main academic event of the day was our presentations, where each group gave a rundown of their asteroid’s eventual fate. For 2012 FN62, we found ejection from the solar system to be the most likely outcome. Of course, there were the 8 out of 156 test clones that plummeted into the sun instead—as everyone found slightly humorous, I found those cases a lot more fun. Each group had only five minutes, so there was a lot of data to run through quite fast.
12 successful presentations later, we headed back to Domenici for a last SWRI lecture before card games and the final dinner at Taos. One last table of students and faculty (although no assigned seats today) and one last set of announcements from Dr. F; it was quite bittersweet.
After dinner, we returned to the dorms, where I still had to finish my poem before the talent show an hour later. Luckily, the poem was successfully written, and everyone made it to Science Hall on time.
The talent show, of course, was one of our final SSP traditions; a perfect cap on a day strangely full of lasts. There were many amazing student (and faculty) performances, from music to paper-tower-building, rock stacking, poem reading, paper-airplane folding, or card tricks. Somehow, the three hours of talents passed very quickly, and by the end of Harry and Ze’s amazing Minecraft-esque final poem, it was already 10 PM (early by SSP standards, I know).
We took one final nighttime walk back from the Bio Annex, and all headed up to the third floor. In an idea that originated somewhere back in week 3, Samantha and Steinnun did my makeup outside of the game room, which led to much giggling (but luckily negligible eye poking). After a few photos, we ventured down to the remains of a soccer game and then recruited a few more people to head out to our dorm lawn and stargaze.
Stargazing was super cool; we saw several meteors (and got bitten by several mosquitos), but mostly just spent a while chatting. By the time we headed back into the dorms, there was just enough time left before curfew for one final game of fish. (Fish: some people have cult movies. SSPers have cult card games.) With a few minutes to spare before curfew, we headed to bed for the second to last time at SSP.