Back in June 1983 I attended a week-long summer course for high school students at Ball State University. This was just before my senior year. For a few days I lived like a college student. I was housed in a dorm room with a roommate, I ate in the cafeteria and spent time in the rec room with the other high schoolers, and I attended classes at the Cooper Science Complex. This was 32 years ago. I wrote some notes about the experience in the journal that I kept then, but I don't remember it all that well. I do remember that the Cooper complex had a big planetarium inside of it and it had a roll-off roof observatory on top with several telescopes inside.
On Saturday afternoon June 6th I had the chance to drive through the campus and walk around the south part of it with Adrian for the first time since taking that course back in 1983. It was a nice day; mostly cloudy but bright with some sunshine, light winds, and the temperature stayed in the mid-70's°F range.
We'd found the Student Center (where the banquet was going to be held) and parked in the lot there, but we were an hour and a half early, so we walked around and took in some of the sights. The place seemed almost deserted! After all, the spring semester was over, and the students were mainly gone. We found the Cooper Science Complex where most of the meetings had taken place for the past three days, but this building seemed quiet and deserted from the outside also. (I realized, after reading through the itinerary again, that the last Paper Session had probably ended right before we got there, and the participants had probably scattered back to their hotel rooms to get ready for the banquet.) We walked back to the Student Center and waited for people to start arriving. Here are some photos I took with my cell phone during this quiet tour.
The Beneficence Statue ("Benny") on the Ball State Campus.
The Ball State Student Center
(where the AAVSO Banquet was held).
Though this isn't the clearest photo of the afternoon, I had to add this. While we were walking around the campus, we happened to see an all-black morph Gray Squirrel! I'm not sure I've ever seen one of these before first-hand!
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