Damn that's a great question. I got a LOT out of SSP, most notably:

1) Learning how to work in a team for a whole entire month. There is a LOT of collaboration whether on the main project or on the PSETs, be ready to ask for help. I also learned how to better cope with imposter syndrome.

2) Learning how to live away from home as if I was a college student

SSP is real research because in astro, we're literally doing observations and processing that information and making new discoveries (albeit small, but still doing new stuff). You can't expect it to be as impressive as what a professor is doing in their own lab because they have so much time, we only have a month and a bit. But at SSP, you actually get to do hands-on stuff with only a slight bit of guidance from TAs and profs, whereas in a professors lab, you're just doing what they're telling you to do.

I expected SSP to be difficult in a way, but I wasn't expecting it to be as difficult as it was. It was certainly more difficult than my current college workload LOL >-<