Week Four - A Week of Fun

I think this week has been my favorite so far – from meeting a Nobel laureate to doing amazing outreach, it was definitely a week I’ll always remember. 

On Monday, all of the interns had the day off for Juneteenth, and I was looking forward to having a relaxing day. Sadly, I ended up having to go to Urgent Care – I unfortunately got bit by a spider :( The only thing that made it any better was all the interns making jokes about me turning into Spiderman, and the intern potluck we had that evening. It was Italian themed, and everything was delicious, so that was a good way to finish out my first less-than-ideal day in D.C.! 

By Tuesday, the spider bite was already doing better, and it felt good to go back to work and be productive. Because we had Monday off, the FYI newsletter was published today instead of Monday, so I spent the day working on that. After work, a group of interns headed over to Tonic for a free jazz performance – the music was great, and so was the food. We finished out the evening having a watch party for Heartstopper. If you haven’t seen it, I can’t recommend it enough! We got through three episodes together... but I may have stayed up until midnight and finished the whole series. Oops. 

Wednesday was another work from home day. I had a meeting with my mentor to get some new assignments, and I’m excited to start working on one of the features on the FYI website – the budget tracker. Congress is starting to release appropriations numbers for different agencies, so one of the things FYI does is keep track of all of those sometimes challenging to find numbers and put them in one place that’s easy to navigate and understand. After work, all I did was head over to the post office to pick up some packages (more yarn for more crocheting!), and then I checked out the Foggy Bottom farmer's market. I’m sad I hadn’t gone sooner – my hometown has a weekly farmers market, so it felt familiar and was really comforting. 

On Thursday, I went into the office in-person for one of our weekly editorial meetings. This is my first week getting multiple writing assignments for the newsletter, and we also started to discuss what I might write about for a longer-form article. I also continued to work on the budget numbers and the Tableau software I had mentioned – right now, I’m trying to build an interactive tracker of all the different national labs throughout the country. There was also an SPS lunch on this day at ACP, and all the interns got to sit down with Dr. John Mather!!! It was an amazing time getting to talk with him, and he also gave us a presentation on some of the stuff he has worked on, as well as some current projects he has now.Along with that, he gave us some stellar advice about what success actually means, and it was inspiring to see how far our careers in physics might take us. 

Friday, I worked from home, finishing up on some writing and formatting for the weekly newsletter. The interns also got trained on the different demos we were going to do at Astronomy on the Mall. Otherwise, I had a pretty lazy day – playing some Minecraft and going to bed early as I was pretty exhausted after such a busy week. 

Saturday was an amazing day – we had Astronomy on the Mall this evening, planned out by the amazing SOCK intern, Emily. I always love doing outreach events and I also ended up learning a lot about astronomy myself, from both the SPS interns and some of the people at the various other tables. I think doing outreach is my favorite aspect of being a scientist because it’s a huge part of getting younger people inspired and excited about science. One of the tables we had set up was for trivia, and when I asked a group of people if a bowling ball and feather would fall at the same speed due to gravity, one young girl (probably under ten years old!) asked if we were in a vacuum or in normal air to clarify how she should answer – outreach is meant to inspire others, but it always ends up inspiring me just as much. Seeing so many people that remind me of my younger self is so rewarding, and I feel so lucky to have participated in such an amazing event with amazing people – another big shoutout to Emily for all her hard work :) 

Next week will mark the halfway point of our internship, and I look forward to telling you all about it. Until then, have an amazing week!