Adler Planetarium Interview – Part 2

Location: Adler Planetarium

Date: Saturday, April 12, 2014; 1:00-2:30 pm

After my interview with Natalie, the next step was to interview with the volunteer supervisor for the ‘Public Education Programs’.  It was a group interview session and I couldn't make the first date that had been proposed, and so we had agreed on this one.  I had to go prepared with an experiment and was thinking about it for a long time.  Initially I contemplated the “Galileo was right” experiment from ‘From the Earth to the Moon’, and for which I would have used a golf and a ping-pong ball.  Well, that would have been great in theory, but there is a reason why that experiment was performed on the Moon, with no wind.  So I abandoned that idea and decided to go with the “Oil Spill” experiment I had done with kids at the ‘Mad Scientists’ project.  I went shopping earlier in the week and bought a bunch of things and after trying in a few stores, went to the dependable ‘Target’, where I got two types of place-mats, cotton balls, medical wraparound bandage etc.  As disparate as these sounds, this all would make sense…or so I hoped.

My destination

It was the first nice day of the year and so I decided to walk the 2+ miles to Adler from my place.  As I took the South entrance and waited for Michael, I saw that the place was busy, a lot of people taking advantage of the weather to come here.  Michael came to pick me up and I recognized him from the person I had spoken to at the 'Volunteer Expo'.  We were waiting for another volunteer, but that person was a no show; which was a shame since Michael said that the interview was always good with two people.  Well, we would have to do with one today!

We went down through the dark corridors of the museum and into the offices in the basement.  It was a huge area and as I walked through the cubicles, I could see a lot of fun stuff in all of them.  It looked like this is a good group of people.  I saw another group in one part of the museum and he said that there was another event on today, called ‘Hack Day’; which is a 30-hour session that pairs people and they are tasked with coming up with innovative projects.  We went inside a room, which he termed as “Astronomer’s room”, and sat across the table.  He put a box on the table and it had a bunch of random things in it.  We were ready to begin. 

Michael said that he would be taking notes and as a beginning, asked me to “sell him” on my favorite vacation from the last 4 years.  It was not what I had expected, but spoke about my trip to ‘Cape Cod’ last summer and mentioned that it was special because I was with friends and for once I spent the weekend relaxing and not doing the usual touristy things.  What followed next was him pulling out interesting looking objects and us role playing.  For example, I was to be a teacher and him a student, with me trying to teach him by only asking questions and without touching them.  I will refrain from describing the objects should someone reading this be interviewed in the future, but suffice to say that it was as challenging a thing that I have ever come across during an interview.  Michael’s goal was for me to learn more through observation. The point was for the object to do the “teaching” – a very important aspect of the education programs at Adler. 

Next was my demo and I laid out everything that I had bought on the table.  The way the experiment works is that you mix oil and water and then observe how effective different materials could be in soaking the oil.  The main thing to learn here was that oil, which is a hydrocarbon, is attracted more to a polymeric material and so there were certain items in my kit – such as the plastic place-mats or a nylon sock – which were more suited to the cleanup.  He asked a lot of questions and I felt that I could have done a better job than I eventually did.  After that there were more props which he pulled out and once again, I had to play the role of a teacher and only communicate in questions.  For one of the objects I discussed a childhood memory and he said that this is the kind of connection that we needed to make with our guests at Adler.

The original 'Apollo 13 flight plan

The interview was at an end and he asked about my availability and preference.  I said that besides ‘Adler After Dark’ – which is a 21+ event – I would love to do other programs with kids.  He asked if I could come on weekends and nights and I said yes, as long as I did not have other commitments.  He asked what about times such as 1 am for watching a “Total Lunar Eclipse”, and I said only if it were Friday or Saturday, unless Capt. Jim Lowell was visiting! It was interesting that I should have mentioned his name, since Jim Lowell is in fact a board member and there are several of his memorabilia on display.  We went upstairs and Michael showed me a few, such as Capt. Lowell’s rejection and subsequent acceptance letters into ‘NASA’, the original flight plan from ‘Apollo 13’, the only astronaut plaque not on the moon etc.  Then he showed me the ‘Gemini’ module and asked questions while showing interesting things such as the maneuvering nozzles, the heat shields and other features.

Michael then gave me a day pass for the museum and said that they would be in touch.  As I walked through the exhibits, I thought how cool it would be to work here.  It had been an intense interview session – more than some of my job interviews!  But it was also fun and I am looking forward to the challenges that something like this will present.  Let’s hope that I was good enough to impress him.