Sunday, June 2, 2024
By:
Hello friends, family, and future, present, and past interns
I thought for a while about what my first blog should be and I've decided to write down all of the things I've learned, about DC and myself, that i wish I would have known a week ago. So this will mostly be a summary, but I'll try to focus on the parts where I learned something.
On Sunday morning I flew in from Phoenix. By around 7:00 pm, I'd dropped my stuff at my room. Now, I was on a mission to find food. I hadn't really eaten since breakfast at the airport. At first I went to the closest grovery story I could, Market at Columbia Plaza, which is right around the corner from the building, but they were closed. This likely ended up being a good thing though, becuase the next day I went back and found that all of the food is way too expensive for what it was. I ended up going to the next closest grocery store, which was a Whole Foods. The food there was also way too expensive, but at least the frozen meals I got were good. I realized while I was in the store that I didn't have any pots or pans, but I knew that in a few days we'd be getting things from previous year's interns.
The next morning, Monday, I decided to go for a run. I haven't been doing a lot of cardio when I exercise and felt like the change of scenery was a good excuse to start. Our dorm rooms almost couldn't be closer to the national mall. I ended up running way further than I was planning to just becuase there was so much to see. However, that did turn parts of my "run" into a walk. Later that day after we had all settled in we played some games as a group. It was a really fun and interesting experience to play Mafia with a group of people I'd never met before.
On Tuesday, we all got dressed up in buissness formal attire and head to the American Center for Physics (ACP) together for our orientation. While orientations can sometimes be a blur of information that drags on, I thought the day flew by. My team won the spagetti and marshmellow tower building team building exercise. We played some Bocce on the roof where there's a wonderful view of the city. We got our headhsots taken. Ate some delicous lunch. Learned a lot about each other. All on all, it was a very good day.
Due to some lingering jetlag I woke up way later than I was planning to on Wednesday, so I decided not to go into the ACP for my internship and wokr remotely. The APS careers position is fully remote this year, because the American Physical Society (APS) is a remote first workplace. I think that some of my fellow interns are going to fully take advantge of the remote days of their positions, but I learned quickly on Wednesday that I can not be productive working from my dorm. I had a quick meeting with my mentor to solidify our plans for the summer. We solidified that I would be helping to solidify some the existing Physicist Profiles on the APS Careers website and fill in the gaps of careers with new interviews. That evening I went to the thrid closest grocery store, Trader Joe's. Trader Joes should be the first top for all future interns reading this. Don't even bother going to the markey and Whole Foods.
Thursday morning I woke up to my first alarm and had my two back up alarms waiting for me in case I ended up over sleeping again. I could not work in my bedroom again. I had head some of the interns takling abou thow they went to the ACP the day before and figured that I'd have some good company when I showed up. To my supprise, I was going to have a more productive day than I expected, no one was there. There were a few super kind APS employees that I ate my lunch with, but other than that all of the other employees were remote that day. With that, I had no distractions and read through a ton of the Physicist Profiles to prepare for my tasks this summer. That night I talked to some of my fellow interns about how nice the ACP facillites were and they decided that they would join me on Friday.
Friday morning a few other interns and myself went to the ACP and got ourselves set up and some of the workstations. What I found out that day was that while working in my room alone was not going to lead to peak productivity, working with a bunch of friendly people I was just getting to know was also not going to lend itself to peak prodcutivity. This up coming Monday I am determined to find the right balance. Once we had all finished our responsibilities for the day, we headed to one of the other intern's dorms for some more games and had a great time! We also today got our supplies from the pervious interns. Future interns keep in mind that for the first few days, you'll only have what you bring. It is up to one of you to drive and get the bins. You can likely read Kai's blog for more info.
Saturday when I woke up I decided to go for a run. It was definitely hotter than the pervious run, but it still felt really good to get out. Then I did some chores and errands like laundry and shopping (again at Trader Joe's). Once my laundry was finsihed I met a group of us that had gone to the National Mall for some spike ball, ultimate frisbee, and football. Being from somewhere much less humid than DC, the heat really got to me. I was pooped after a few hours of playing different games. Once we had all gone back to our dorms and showered, a bunch of us hung out again and met up with one last year's interns and her boyfriend. It was really interesting to get to know them for a bit and hear about their experiences in DC. Later that night, me and a few others played the most fun games of go fish that I've ever played and some almost as fun games of spoons.
When I woke up on Sunday, today as I'm wiriting this, A group of us wen to the DuPont Circle Market and ended up geting some fresh strawberries, pickles, and a book. I also did a lot of work on the summer Macro-economics course I'm taking online after we got back. I ended up squeezing a leg day in at the gym right before it closed. Future interns keep in mind that because the gym is staffed by student employees they will likely have significantly shorter hours on weekends. For me it was 10:30 to 4:00 today, instead of 6:30 to 8:00. I then wrote up most of the bog you have just read through and ended up watching the first two Indiana Jones movies with some of the interns, a few of whom had never seen them.
Overall I had a great week, and I hope that some of the things I mentioned will help future interns make the most of their first week.
(Below are some pictures from my Satuday run, soon I'll learn how to imbed them in the text. But for now, this will have to do : ) )
Charles Wszalek