Saturday, May 30, 2015
By:
I am still in disbelief that I am here, four years ago I was not sure I would be able to continue my education after high school, now I am here in DC interning at the National Institute of Standards and Technology pursuing my passions. I’ve had a tremendous week filled with new adventures, faces, and projects.
After settling in the apartment and meeting my roommates, I went hiking to Harpers Ferry, WV with my sister and niece. We hiked the overlook trail and visited the haunted St. Peters Church. It was a beautiful sightseeing experience.
Monday was another eventful day, other SPS interns and I went to the National Zoo at 8am, then went to Constitution Avenue to see the Memorial Day Parade, and finally to the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art. Throughout these events I was able to meet and bond with everyone, I am very lucky to be surrounded by fantastic, brilliant persons. Tuesday, we had our orientation at the American Center for Physics where I met the staff of SPS, AIP, and nobel laureate John Mather. Dr. Mather joined us for lunch and encouraged us to not be afraid to ask for help. After orientation, the director of SPS, Sean Bentley, took Teresa and I to the NIST campus to meet with our mentor, Dr. John Suehle. Upon our arrival, we went straight to the Physical Measurement Laboratory where we will be working this summer with a team of great scientists. Dr. Suehle gave us an introduction to our project and a tour of the labs where all the fun takes place. It was a lot of new information for me, but I left NIST feeling extremely excited and thankful for this opportunity. I took the wrong bus Wednesday morning to get to NIST, so Dr. Suehle, Christina, and Teresa picked me up at my unexpected location. The rest of the week continued to be exceptional, I learned to take the NIST shuttle instead of the metro bus to get to NIST, we had our safety training, met other members of the group leading the efforts of developing the solid-state nanosenor, read the articles with information and importance of nanopore analysis, interacted with the SURF interns, and set up our schedule for next week. I cannot express enough what a fantastic first week I had at NIST.
To end our successful week we had dinner Friday night at the Sakuramen restaurant in Adams Morgan.
Veronica Martinez-Vargas