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WAVES Closing Celebration

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Like all good things, this year’s WAVES workshop has come to a close. It’s been a packed ten weeks of software development, one-on-one mentorship, enriching enrichment seminars, and lively group get-togethers.

As we bid each other farewell and start our next chapters, we got together for a last time today to celebrate everyone’s hard work & achievement over the course of the workshop. We invited participants and mentors to submit gifs or memes that they felt represented their WAVES experience ahead of time. I threw them in a slide show and had everyone give a thirty second-ish explanation of their image & say anything else they wanted to to the group — followed, of course, by a hearty round of poetry-slam style snaps!

group photo

(This format actually worked surprisingly well — much better than the other formats of virtual socials we had tried out. I’d recommend giving something like this a go for anyone facilitating a virtual group or classroom this fall!)

Here’s a recap of some of the wholesome fun.

🔗 Abby

cat drinking from a sink

Abby writes,

We’re all just making the most of a crazy situation and having some fun with it :smile:

🔗 Acacia

man with unexpected monster

Acacia writes,

Oh shoot I need a gif of my WAVES experience hold on

🔗 Alex

Alex as a emoji

Alex writes,

My crowning achievement is becoming a Slack emoji.

🔗 Anya

Gif vs. Jif

Anya writes,

No explanation needed

🔗 Austin

dancing skeleton

Austin writes,

Sometimes I thought the code was going to be the death of me, but in the end we made something awesome and I had a great time doing it! :^)

🔗 Daniel

dog jumping off couch

Daniel writes,

At times, it felt like either Empirical or C++ would always be there to be like “nope, not today!”

🔗 Diane Blackwood

pulsating Avida grid

Diane writes,

Sometimes I feel like my brain twinkling on and off all over the place, all with so much new information and perspective.

🔗 Elizabeth

playing chess with a buff computer

Elizabeth writes,

My mentors (Emily and Alex) are the awesomest people on earth — they encouraged me and helped me even when I was an absolute potato at C++!!

🔗 Emily

a secretly remote-controlled van

Emily writes,

All three of my mentees managed to wrap up their projects exactly on time; this may look like good planning on my part (and I was ready to step in if needed!), but they deserve all of the actual credit

🔗 Maria

Kermit typing franticly

Maria writes,

This describes how I felt while transcribing multiple hours of case study interview audio! :sweat_smile:

🔗 Matthew

Frankenstein's monster

Matthew writes,

Watching the workshop turn from a PDF of a bazillion applications to a bunch of super-awesome people doing super-awesome things has been like seeing Frankenstein’s monster come alive!

🔗 Oliver

party parrot escaping a cage

Oliver writes,

WAVES is the soap

🔗 Raheem

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Raheem writes,

coming in and looking at the emperical library that was in almost all c++ was a little overwhelming so this is how i felt when i finally started putting things together and was able to understand how other peoples projects and pieces of the library worked

🔗 Sara

cat jumping in a computer margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;”}

Sara writes,

Once you dive into Empirical, your life is forever changed!

🔗 Stephanie

loading icon on a cat

Stephanie writes,

My brain during the WAVES workshop, I learned a lot!

🔗 Tetiana

sweaty decision man

Tetiana writes,

the following meme represents my experience during waves, because the three-line code using standard library beats my >100-line code in terms of performance!

🔗 Uma

tweet with choice C++ error message

Uma writes,

These iconic, indecipherable C++ error messages have become a very memorable part of my summer project experience:grin::grin:, and I’m grateful to have gained many C++ and programming skills and to have met so many wonderful people through WAVES!

🔗 Thank You!

powerpoint spider abomination

Thank you to all of our participants and mentors for bringing your talent and energy to the workshop. It really has been a great experience getting to work with you all. Hat tip, in particular, to our fearless PI’s: Dr. Rob Pennock and Dr. Charles Ofria.

If you’d like to share the love (& top-quality memes/gifs) around, hop into the conversation here!