#89. Space Simulation (Friday, February 24, 2006)

What is your best day…of establishing your own special place within an organization?

Spend your time around insanely smart people; and maybe one day you’ll become smart like them as well. At least, that was part of my logic for following Nigel Healey to literally every school activity he did through all four years of high school. (The other part was that he was actually my friend, and eventually best friend¹.)

Cross-country running? Check. Quizbowl? Check. Debating? Check (though that one didn’t last).

But the coolest (and simultaneously least cool) activity out of all of them had to be Space Sim.

Space Sim was basically this school club that ran simulated space missions in this defunct auto body shop at the nearby technical college. And it was legit. Through the years, the club had built up a whole spaceship from metal framing and drywall, with fully-equipped rooms for lab testing, navigation, communications, living quarters, etc. (though our safety standards left something to be desired²). Plus, we had a Mission Control room that was fitted with over a dozen computers. And a bunch of big empty spaces that the team of “simulators” would fill up with rocks and mock comet storms to serve as the planetary surface.

Every Friday after school we had a work session, intended for us to make preparations for the annual week-long “mission” in March (to a carefully-researched planet/moon/comet), or do a one-day “mini-mission”. Of course, the reality was that with over thirty members, an extremely chill teacher supervisor, and sessions that went late, the whole thing was more like one big weekly party – filled with pizza runs and all the unrelated late-night distractions (for nerds) – than anything else.

Side Note: Our most notable side activity happened a few months later, when Nigel challenged me to a game of tic-tac-toe, and beat me (eight years after I thought the game had been solved). Probably the most mind-blowing moment of my teenage years. Pro tip: Be ready for the diagonal opener.

Of course, high school Jeff wasn’t exactly the most fun-loving guy, nor was the club’s leadership particularly good at giving direction³. So just a few months after I had joined in my sophomore year (following Nigel), I was about to quit out of lack of purpose.

Then, on this Friday night, while wandering around the facilities aimlessly, I came across the storage room – “Copernicus” – which I saw was filled to the brim with boxes upon boxes mixed in with a whole lot of random junk. I asked Sean (#109), the head of the club, what that room was for, and he told me that’s where they kept all their tools and hardware and everything else; but no one really went in there any more because it was a nightmare to search.

I found my purpose.

And for four hours that night, I scour through the mess – uncovering telescopes, paint and drywall cans, videoconferencing kits, bottles of unmarked chemicals, and every type of weird gadget and construction tool imaginable. Every time I find something new, I show Nigel and Sean and they: (1) identify what the heck the object is; and/or (2) react in excitement that we actually have that object in our possession. By the end of that night, I’ve gone through about half the room and have started to formulate a Dewey Decimal System for organizing it all.

And with that, I had finally unlocked a passion that led me to be fully engaged in this once-in-a-lifetime educational opportunity – which would fill up two-and-a-half more years of memorable Friday nights⁴…

My seventh one now (#91), I believe.
Out of the many incidents, we once had the upper bed of a self-constructed bunk bed completely collapse (luckily, no one was sleeping in it). For some unexplained reason, during my time there, we never got in trouble once with the fire marshals or any safety inspectors.
Until Nigel and I became co-heads in our senior year, I’d like to believe.
Which could have benefitted from a bit more diversification (#114)…but they were memorable nonetheless.