NASA Glenn Academy for Space Exploration
Week 2 Summary
By: Mehran & Kim
Sunday – June 1, 2008:
Sunday was rather a slow day after a hectic week. I got to sleep in and take care of some personal stuff. Ephraim, Sabrina, Kristin, and Tom woke up early and went to church. Mary Beth went home and Jay was sitting in his room playing World of Warcraft all day…way to go Jay! I have to admit though; it kinda felt weird that Jay wasn’t around. All of us except for Sabrina and Mary Beth got together around 6:30 and talked about some ideas for the team project. At 10, all of us got together again to narrow down the topics, and after doing some serious math, “addition”, we were left with four topics. The ‘Academyites’, or ‘Glennterns’ as Jay calls us, and I think it’s really cool, broke into smaller teams to write a proposal for each topic.
Monday – June 2, 2008:
Our first Monday at Glenn, yohoooooo!!! After breakfast we all parted and went to work. I’m sure all of us spent the rest of the day trying to not get caught by our PI’s doing research and working on our proposals, something we’re not suppose to do at work, but since we’re the Academy we did it anyways! At 6:15 we went to Panera to eat dinner, of course not nearly as good as what we have everyday for breakfast, with our lovely guest speaker, Sheila Bailey. Her presentation went very smoothly and was thoroughly enjoyed by all. After some medical antics and after being kicked out of Panera for closing time, the Academyites retired back to the Stud for the evening.
Tuesday – June 3, 2008
Since Mary Beth and Tom were out, it felt weird going to work without the full gang. At breakfast, Sabrina decided to fire up one of the helicopter engines on display in the cafeteria. To her dismay, the engine only lights up and spins slowly. At 10am we met in building 86 for a talk by Geoffrey Landis regarding future missions to the red planet (Mars). Later on, just as we were getting ready to go to the hospital to visit Tom for the first part of our Weekly Rap session, he came back to the Stud! We were all relieved to see that he was doing well, and that his diagnosis was not serious.
Wednesday – June 4, 2008
Mary Beth got back to the Stud early in the morning right before it was time to leave for breakfast and work. Everyone was very happy to see that she was back. After work, we got together and talked about the group project. After much debating into the wee hours of the morning, it was decided that we would pick the Balloon Assisted Launch Project.
Thursday – June 5, 2008
Today, everyone was exhausted because of our late night the day before, but we got through the day just fine. After work, we packed for our camping trip and got together to discuss the specifics of the group project. Everyone picked an aspect of the project that they wanted to work on. Then the group presentation was put together. It was another late night.
Friday – June 6, 2008
It’s Friday, yesssss! It’s been a crazy week, and now we have to give a presentation at 8 in the morning. Well, I should have said Tom, Kristin, and Ephraim had to give the presentation because they were the only ones that worked on it. The presentation went great and we all survived it. Good job guys! After that we did all the routines again: work until 12, go back to the stud, eat lunch and go back to work. At 4 we all went to the picnic that was arranged for all the interns at Glenn. There was food, so that was good. We hung out for a while, caught some flying plates and napkins, and around 5 went back to the stud to leave for Pennsylvania. After a long drive we arrived at the campsite. It was kinda late and we were all starving. After struggling with the tent for a while we finally set it up. It was time to go wash up. Oh crap, the bathroom was horrible, but we did it anyways. Everyone except for Jay and Ephraim slept in the tent. It was a lot of fun trying to avoid getting too close to the person sleeping next to you. Well, apparently Tom didn’t care that much. I woke up in the middle of the night and Tom’s face was a few inches away from my face, he woke up at the same time too. After a startled response from both of us we rolled over the other way and went back to bed.
Saturday – June 7, 2008
It’s Saturday, last night was my first time sleeping in a tent. It was a pretty rough sleep—but worth it though. We got up around 9:30, washed up, and then enjoyed the lovely breakfast—the bagels were great. After the breakfast we went for a long drive around the area. We drove to Uniontown, PA to fill up the gas tanks. On the way back we stopped at a Dairy Queen and took our own lunch inside and sat there and ate while everyone was staring at us. It was so awkward that we all decided to, at least, buy some sort of desert. It was already 3pm by now. We went back to the campsite after a wrong turn that cost us half an hour—I was just following Jay, don’t blame me!
After a very quick rest, we went hiking. It was really cool, the path was along the river and every so often we took a detour from the path to go next to the river to refresh a little. For dinner we had burgers, corn on the cob, and hotdogs. We grilled the burgers like every other normal human would do, but when it came to the hotdogs, I personally got very creative. I’d rather not talk about it, but let me just say that it was fun!
