Location: Adler Planetarium
Date: Tuesday, March 18, 2014; 6:00-6:30 pm
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
-
Carl Sagan
I was a kid when I first saw ‘Cosmos’ and to be
honest, was completely underwhelmed; preferring instead to travel the galaxy
with ‘Captain Kirk’ and his merry men
on ‘USS Enterprise’. It took years before I could truly appreciate
the brilliance of Carl Sagan, for he was not just trying to wow us with the
wonders of the Universe; he was aiming to awaken the curiosity…the passion, for
discovery. He took us to our past in
order to show us our future. And it wasn’t
just him or ‘Star Trek’, there were
the ‘Voyager’ missions, the ‘Space Shuttles’, the ‘Mars Explorer’, the ‘Cassini’ mission…everything
contributed towards me becoming fascinated with our Universe and its
exploration. Years ago I had visited ‘Adler Planetarium’ during a trip to
Chicago. Little did I know then that
someday I would be applying to be a part of the team.
 |
| The final frontier |
I had met the staff of Adler at a
‘Volunteer Expo’ last month and
learned that like any other organization, they too required volunteers for
their museum as well as special events.
I had submitted an application and felt that if selected, for once I
could use my science background as a volunteer.
Not having heard back for several weeks I filled out another application
online and then received an email from the volunteer coordinator Natalie,
requesting an interview. The times that
she had proposed were going to be difficult for me, so after a bit of
to-and-fro, we settled on this evening. I
tweeted in the morning that I was interviewing at Adler and tagged them. I had said that it was my chance to “finally reach for the stars”. They immediately marked it as “favorite” and wished me luck. Looks like I was off to a good start.
I arrived to find that the door
was locked, so I called her and a security lady then let me in. Natalie met me and took me into a
classroom. She had asked me to get my
resume and I handed it to her, saying that this was my first interview with
a resume in several years. She asked me
why I was interested in volunteering for them, and I told her about watching ‘Cosmos’ as a kid and the other events that had led me there. She asked about my science background and I
said that while I was trained as a Chemist rather than a Physicist, she should
not hold it against me! She said that
they would bring me in as an ‘Adler After
Dark’ volunteer. I had been to that
event a few times last year and enjoyed it quite a bit. She said that I would be managing carts with
experimental set-ups on them; engaging and educating the visitors. Plus there would be other roles that I would
be helping out as required.
The next step was a group
interview with the staff leader Michael, where I would need to do a 15 minute
experiment as a demo. Yikes! Fortunately that was almost a month away and
I had some time to think of what I would be doing. Then there would be a 4 hour orientation
before they could let me loose on the visitors.
They needed a one year commitment, with the events being once a
month. I said I could do that and
now it was just a question of me preparing for my demo experiment. As I left that day, I thought about the
famous dialogue from ‘Seinfeld’ when ‘George’ goes to work for the ‘Yankees’ – “Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle ... Costanza?”. In this case it was – “Einstein, Hawkins, Sagan, deGrasse Tyson…Tipnis?” Well, it would be an interesting ride to the final frontier for
sure.
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