After months of waiting to receive the news of acceptance, it finally arrived on September 5, 2013– also known as the greatest day ever!
I’m sitting in my room studying and going over different things to get organized for upcoming tests and projects which had ever approaching deadlines when I got an email that popped up in the side of my computer with the subject ‘NASA “go”.’ I instantly start screaming and dancing around with my dog out of excitement forgetting that my roommate was sleeping. She ran into my room in a panic wondering what was going on and my only response was “I’m going to space!”
Addie, Kelly and Brad were in a conference when they received the news. Kelly and Brad were sitting in the row behind Addie. She types in a large font on her computer “we were selected for USIP.”
“We just had to sit there and cover our mouths to keep from screaming with joy,” Kelly said.
At the beginning of our first meeting, we reminisced on these funny stories of getting the news before getting down to business discussing a group meeting time, the first steps we need to take and when the kick-off telecom will be. We decided to have a weekly meeting on Tuesdays at 11 am to update the team on what each of us is doing and what we need to do next to keep moving forward. The kick-off telecom is on Thursday, September 26 to welcome us into this undergraduate research program!
During this first meeting, we also reviewed our proposal. We looked at errors we made, things we presented well, and what NASA had to say about it. We got a rare excellent overall with less than 5% errors. We got to be proud for a moment and then dove into changes that needed to be made for our journey to the Vomit Comet!