Adventures with Summer Students

Today my first of three summer students arrived.  This is a student I had last year, so she already knows the ropes.  After her orientation, she just came and got me rather than me having to go pick her up.  She is even sitting in the same room as she was in last year.  But she was a little startled by all the changes that have occurred in the past year, like the construction of a new transformer room down the hall from my office that took away a former lobby and alcove.

But the project is completely different.  She hasn't really started on anything yet because her accounts have not yet been set up.  Last year she did more database work; this year she'll be doing some instrumentation and performance modeling of applications running at full scale on the supercomputer.  I think it will be a good experience for her.

My next student, the undergraduate who will be working on this same project, arrives in two weeks.  Then my high school student will arrive the next week, while I am away at a conference.  I've arranged with my colleague down the hall to look after her for those first four days.

Also, we are offering our summer one-day supercomputing course.  Last year we had about 30 people register for it.  This year we already have 55, and that's before our target audience, the summer students, have even had a chance to register.  The room doesn't hold too many more people (maybe 75 or 80) so we will be in trouble if a lot more folks register.  I'm thinking if it's this popular, we will have to have one course during the year for staff members and another course in the summer just for students.