CERN Accelerating science

Angèle Taillard

Hi all, My name is Angèle Taillard, and I somehow got selected for this incredible experience. Well in fact, I didn't know it would be THAT great. I was completely overwhelmed by work at uni when I received the mail, but I read a "Congratulations !" with a CERN adress and took me a while to understand that I had been accepted.

My first reaction was probably something like this: "No way they picked me." Then I was jumping around for about an hour or something before going back to work. Then it all started at Schuman. I actually ran into two girls while going to one of the events organized by the students. It was a complete match. We talked a lot on our way to the CERN (which was like... 30-minutes walk, but felt like five) and then we continued talking. Since we were at the same floor, we would hang out a lot in the kitchen, laugh every night, then another boy joined and damn, we realized that we were cool kids. We met a lot of others amazing people -part of the Jazz Club, since they went to some Jazz festival, they named their group like this- and continued hung out.

From the Hardronic festival to Lyon, from R1 to l'Aiguille du Midi. Always cheerful, singing and laughing around. I found myself a new family, not the same blood but the same spirit. I got more in two months than anything I could ask for. This was truly, genuinely, amazingly amazing. And I still can't recover from this. I may not have discovered particles but I discovered more things on myself than the past five years.

AsI said in my very last lecture, quoting again my friend "It's not just a physics school, it's about a school for life."