A Dream Fulfilled

When I was 13 years old Apollo 13 came out.  This epic tale of the "successful failure" of 1970 changed by life.  I watched it and I was hooked.  I wanted nothing more than to be an astronaut.

I watched that movie over and over again, several times a week, some times every day.  When I reached the first 100 viewings, the VHS went dead, and my mom had to buy me a new one.  When I ran that one dead I finally bought the DVD.  And when I started teaching, I bought a second DVD to leave in my classroom.

At 13 my ceiling was covered in star constellations, and the moon dangled above my desk.  My bed was placed at just the right angle to watch the moon rise from it every night.  I had lamps, candles and blankets covered with stars, shelves with books, and duotangs filled with research about the space program and the universities that would help me get there.  This was the dream.  I had to work for NASA.  And so every day I would BEG my parents to take me to Florida, to visit the Cape.  To stand where "they" stood - the men and women brave enough to leave our planet.  It just never happened.

Until November 9, 2014.

When I travel I'm usually pretty good at keeping my cool.  I'm a details person and I travel with large groups of students, who are always my priority.  But when our bus pulled into the NASA parking lot, keeping my cool wasn't an option.  I was full-on geeking out.

There are 7 parking lots at NASA.  Named for the Mercury 7 astronauts.  In order.  Parking lot 1 being Alan Shepherd, 3 being John Glenn and so on.  I wasn't even off the bus and i was vibrating in my seat.  The NASA globe greeted us, and at 9:00 am, at the opening of the park, they played the national anthem. While not "my" national anthem, it was a sign of respect and honour for all those who had served their country through expeditions into space.  I was so proud to see how instantly respectful out students were.  Then again, our Florida family here really are the best.

Our workshop started the best way possible - with a talk and Q&A with Astronaut Winston Scott.  Inspiring does not even begin to cover how I felt about hearing him speak.  The first thing that struck me was his confidence and his passion and excitement towards space flight and research.  I knew just listening to him that I never had the right temperament to be an astronaut.  I was born to teach, and there has never been a moment of regret on my path.  But knowing that I could never do what he did (and most could not display his level of confidence, calm and courage in the face of extreme circumstances such as his) just made my respect him that much more.  The second thing I love is that his Bachelor's degree is in MUSIC.  That's right.  MUSIC.  Then he went on to study engineering later.  And when the kids asked him about this, he said, "Why limit yourself to being just one thing?"  I think this is such beautiful advice.  Why indeed.  Captain Scott plays the trumpet in a NASA band, and then would fly to space.  Before that he flew "Top Gun" F-14 Tomcats for the Navy.  Now he teaches at a University and inspires others.  Why limit yourself.  He never did.

We then had a chance to participate in a Mars Rover Engineering Challenge.  I can promise future Physics students that you will be seeing this in my classroom - because it was amazing.  NASA's understanding of the scientific method, planning, testing, adjusting, testing, working together, experimenting, testing again....is really unparalleled.  And more than just the activity itself, but watching our students work together so well, and so creatively was more than I could have asked for. Ms. Kenkel and Mr. Becker got super competitive about it, but in the end lost to Parm, Emily, Danilyn and Justin - who worked together so well, had an unparalleled attention to detail, and really showed the rest of us how it's done.

There was a workshop on developments we use in our every day life because of the space garden and a stroll through the Rocket Garden.  And I got to walk along the gantry way that Neil and Buzz walked on their way to crawl into Columbia, on top of the Saturn V rocket.  The space mission to top all space missions.  The one that brought man to the moon.  And I walked up and down their path - with the bright orange bars exactly as I remembered them from every time I watched the moon launch over and over again in my teen years.  I closed my eyes and tried to image how it felt.  I'm pretty sure less frightening that it would have been for them - I wasn't 500 feet above the ground next to the world's biggest rocket - complete with rocket fuel (so powerful in fact you had to be at least 3 miles away at the time of launch).  The experience can't be adequately described - though I'm sure from the ridiculous grin on my face in the photos, you may get the idea.

After the workshop we got in line for the bus to take us 5 miles away from the main complex to the Saturn V complex - the building out near the launch pad the holds a full Saturn V rocket - worlds largest - and the rocket that was used for the Apollo (moon) Program.  Again - after almost 20 years of being passionately in love with the thought of space travel, I cannot describe what it was like to stand there - right next to it.  To see a moon vehicle, Lunar exclusion module, command module, service module, and of course, to touch a moon rock (much smoother, denser, and darker than I expected, for the record).  Sadly, we were pressed for time, so we quickly loaded back the bus to return.

And then there was the Atlantis Building.  With the now-retired Atlantis Space Shuttle - one of three remaining shuttles that has been to space.  After a short movie on how the Space Shuttle came to be (which turns out to be a brilliant story in problem solving, persistence and the scientific method), the current arose to reveal Atlantis, it all it's glory.  Goosebumps.  Ahhhh!  I was the nerd standing next to the screen, who ran out to meet it - and photograph it - before the rest of the tourists to catch up.  There was no end to my geek-out in sight!  The Atlantis building has a launch simulator that I had to miss (as I wanted time to go to the space shop! biggest in the world!!), the original prototype of the shuttle (i.e.: giant paper airplane), a space toilet, international space station model to crawl through, and of course - "emergency exits" - also known as the slide that gets you back down to the bottom floor.  NASA really does think of anything.

My only regret about this day is that I was unable to control time, to slow it down and give me the moments I needed to savour it all.  Guess I'll just have to go back again soon.

Kennedy Space Center, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Hello World, It's Me, Shweta!

Hey there world, 

My name is Shweta Sehijpaul. I'm in the 12th grade, at Sullivan Heights, the best school anyone could ask for. As of this moment, I'm sitting at my computer, typing with a heavy pit of trepidation in my stomach, counting down the minutes to the next adventure of my life. 

Destination? Orlando, Florida. Time remaining till we're off? T-minus 5 days, 20 hours, 20 minutes and 11 seconds. Level of excitement on a scale of 1 to 10? STRAIGHT UP TO 1 MILLION!!  Have I packed yet? HA, NOPE. I'll get to that soon enough. I'm probably going to remember about half the things I didn't bring as soon as we land at the airport. (I digress quite a bit - you'll definitely see a large bit of that in my posts to come).

Anyway, why on earth am I going to Florida with 23 other students and 3 awesome teachers? FOR SCIENCE (all wrapped up together with fun with a pretty bow on top)! Florida is home to Kennedy Space Center, DisneyWorld, EPCOT, Universal Studios, and Crystal River. All of these places have a little bit (or a lot) of science woven into them, which is one of the many beautiful things about them. Physics and wildlife conservation are the naturally magical subjects we'll learn more about at Disney, we will literally dive into ecosystem education at Crystal River while swimming with manatees, we will get hands on with engineering alongside the experts over at NASA, while spending some quality time with NASA Astronaut Captain Winston E. Scott. And of course, greenhouse tours at EPCOT, learning how to build roller-coasters, studying how technology helped create the thrill-seeking rides of Universal Studios, plus so much more.

I can't wait to go and experience it all, and to share it all with you, lovely readers! Look forward to hearing tons about these, plus more about these experiences and and my thoughts in general.

Only 5 days, 20 hours, 9 minutes and 11 seconds remaining!​

Museum of Natural History

I love the Museum of Natural History.  The first time I went to one it was in NYC.  I couldn't understand why scientists could possibly want to go to a museum with "history" in the title (sorry historians!) - but then I entered in.  And I saw the natural world organized and unfolding.  I saw wonders I could only dream or read of, and everything started to make more sense.

Not all of our group was as equally enthused about London's Museum of Natural History.  I can only assume one part because the name of the museum doesn't inspire awe in scientists, as I had already learned, and another part pure exhaustion.  So when given the option between sleeping in, and leaving at 9:30 for the museum, only 6 students were willing to get out of bed. Lucky for me I got to spend my day with those awesome 6.  And we had fun.  We explored, we engaged, we ran from room to room, power-walking through the museum hoping to catch a small glimpse of everything before we had to leave to meet the other group for the London Eye and dinner.  And so Janey, Shelby, Harpreet, Harleen, Qudrat and Harsimran joined myself and Mr. Becker on our journey through time. We saw volcanoes, experienced an earthquake, walked next to and under giant fossils of dinosaurs, whales, giant crocodiles and bugs.  We saw jewels, and moon rocks and 500 million year old fossils - one of the first.  And this was cool.  Supercool.  But not nearly as cool as the Spirit Collection.

When I was researching the museum online, I came across a free tour they offered of what they called the "Spirit Collection."  I didn't know much about it, except that it contained specimens from Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle.  As a biologist, I couldn't pass up the chance, and the rest of the group were interested in going as well.  We went to the front dead right away to ask about the tour, and we managed to get the only 8 tickets left for the day.  In addition, the tour was only done in groups of 8, so we managed to get a 'private' tour out of the deal.  After lunch we made way over to the far corner of the museum to meet our guide.  He then proceeded to take us on a 30 minute behind the scenes tour.  The BEST part of the museum that I didn't know existed.  They have 7 floors, making up the majority of the museum, with rooms on end, filled with lockers and cabinets, filled with jars, filled with various plants and animals species.  Almost 80 MILLION specimens.  The sheer number was enough to blow my mind.  We only went through a couple rooms on 1 floor of the building.  We couldn't open up the lockers, which were organized by phyla (I can only imagine how awesome this would be for a Bio 11 class when learning about taxonomy!), but could look at a sample of the jars they had placed out for the tours to see.  We then went into a larger room with huge tanks with steel lids and mini-cranes handing from the ceiling to remove these heavy heavy lids.  These containers held much larger organisms - elephants, gorillas etc.  I wanted to see inside desperately,  but respected this part of the museum as a working research facility.  They have a giant squid in full view as well as pieces of a colossal squid, and around the corner we could see large jars full of monkeys, armadillos, turtles, sharks, and more.  Scientists can sign these out like books for research and take them out of the jars and investigate them in the neighbouring room that looks like a morgue.  I wanted to spend days listening and learning and watching.  And I wanted to open and look inside every cupboard on all 7 floors, if only I was allowed.  And I wasn't the only one geeking out.  This by far was the highlight of the day, and one of my highlights of the trip.

After our time at the Museum of Natural History we ran next door to the Science Museum.  Home to more recent scientific treasures such as the Apollo 10 command module, unused lunar excursion model, and the highlight for me, the original DNA model developed by Crick and Watson.  We had less than 1 hour to explore this museum, which was a shame.  It didn't help that there was very few elevators and the museum was poorly laid out.  There was 5 floors, but most elevators didn't connect more than 3 of them.  It was also skinny and narrow, which meant running back and forth from one end to another to find stairs - except those didn't go up all 5 stories as well.  As a group we were getting frustrated that our limited time was being eaten up by poor museum planning.  And we almost missed the DNA model - we were lucky to find it on the way out the door.  We were so busy soaking in the science, that we were rushing to meet the other group at the Eye.  We sat on the tube with sore feet recalling all the cool things we had seen and lamenting the fact we just didn't have more time.  So on behalf of me and my science nerd partners-in-crime - it was an outstanding day!