Monday, August 9, 2021
By:
I am writing this post five minutes following the submission of my third and final FYI bulletin. The bulletin covers the Biological and Environmental Research Office’s contentious, long-standing low-dose radiation research program. I was especially excited to submit the bulletin because of its strong overlap with a unit in my Writing 101 course on the linear-no threshold theory, which argues that there is a linear relationship between radiation exposure and the likelihood of experiencing adverse health effects, even at very low doses of radiation. I am thrilled that my mentors at FYI were willing to work with me to publish the bulletin after the official end of my internship.
I very much enjoyed presenting my work at the AIP SPS symposium last Friday. I enjoyed the experience so much, in fact, that I went 3-4 minutes over time while presenting. A big thank you to Brad and Kayla for bearing with me and allowing me the opportunity to answer questions despite having already exceeded my presentation time.
As I sign off, I would like to remark on how much I learned this summer from my experience writing for FYI as well as from interactions with people I never anticipated meeting. My four mentors at FYI were unfailingly patient as I made writing- and policy interpretation-related mistakes. I would like to thank them for not only correcting me, but for teaching me how to become a better writer throughout the internship. I leave this summer with a sense of not only how physics and policy overlap, but of how equity considerations inform (or fail to inform) a variety of science policy issues.
I look forward to meeting my intern cohort next fall at PhysCon 2022 with pizza in hand and bucket hat on head.
Until then,
Julia Bauer