Sunny Rasmussen, 2025 DoD CAPE Office Research Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: University of Utah
My name is Sunny Joy! My heart belongs to astrophysics and political science. Astrophysics, because it combines the STEM of physics with the poetry of astronomy and politics because I am a natural born leader.
I major in Physics & Astronomy and Political Science at The University of Utah. My dream is to work in NASA Administration in Washington DC!
As an undergraduate, I work in an X-Ray Astronomy Research Lab. I research black holes using data from the Chandra Telescope to examine the hearts of galaxies.Outside of academia, I love to sew, play volleyball, knit, and spend time with my cat! I love to get involved in my community and serve!

Internship

Host: DoD CAPE Office Research Intern

Internship Blog

Entry 1 (May 26-June 1) “Everyone was so nice!”

Hello!
Welcome to my blog for this summer!
I am so glad you are here reading this!
I hope sharing the experiences I have in DC will be as fun for you as being here is for me.

FIRST WEEK REFLECTION:

So wow. I work in the Pentagon. It is so big in every aspect that I still can’t wrap my head around it.

Can I just start with I was a hungry freshman in love with DC and somehow 3 years later I ended up working in the Pentagon, and I was not expecting that at all?
I was introduced to SPS through a social where they offered free pizza and also a chance to go to DC for a conference. Not wanting to pass up either opportunity, I joined and have loved being involved ever since! SPS has been a grounding reminder for me that making friends in physics is easy and that physics is not some floating orb of elitism academia, instead it’s just a common passion.

I got the chance to do an internship last summer in DC through the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics . I worked for the American College of National Security Leaders (ACNSL) , learned about the military, and enjoyed the adventures .
This summer, I am still stunned to say that I have the chance to be an intern at the Department of Defense (DoD) in Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) .
Getting the offer email was a favorite moment of mine: rolling out of bed for a math lecture to find the offer letter and calling my mom crying, laughing, and jumping up and down in my cute little pink apartment is definitely one of my college highlights. A moment I wish I could have captured in a snowglobe.

After a grueling end of the semester with heavy STEM class -es , but good study buddies, I went back home to Nevada to spend time with the cat, pack, and oh also cram a 3-credit summer long class into 5 days..to graduate on time, because apparently I am a masochist.

After all that though, I have officially started and now finished my first week at the Pentagon!

The week kicked off with SPS intern orientation!

I won’t lie to you guys, I was super nervous about the orientation and even more nervous about the Pentagon.

I didn’t know what to expect walking into either. Coming directly from a hometown where my best STEM opportunities were getting a CTE in automechanics, I was reminded that I have come far but imposter syndrome is a constant ache and gnaw.

Putting on my best smile and best outfit, I went to the orientation and quickly realized that I never have anything to worry about when it comes to SPS. The SPS administrators are so kind and friendly and they create the best culture and environment! The other interns are absolutely the coolest! It is truly a blessing to be navigating this internship with a group of peers who are on my same wavelength: quickly switching between talking about black holes, Taylor Swift, and adventure planning!

The day after SPS orientation was my first day at the Pentagon.

I’ll level with you guys, those closest to me can attest that I had many fears. Most of them revolved around my brain telling me that security would be like 1,000 times worse than TSA but I couldn’t quite fathom that, so I was just generally scared. I was also scared that for no reason I would be expected to know like all of American/Military History and they would maybe pop quiz me for no foreseen reason. So I was consuming history facts and documentaries like no other in the weeks leading up to this. (Sorry mom for info dumping to you about the Bay of Pigs Invasion).

Thankfully though, security was no big deal. And also, thus far no one has given me a pop quiz. Which is good, because I see now that it would be silly if they did…

I say all this to show that there’s a lot of fear, imposter syndrome, and overall anxiety that accompanies exciting opportunities and the best way to meet those challenges is to face them head on. Sometimes you gotta look those worries in the eye and tell them that no one will kick you out for having questions.

Everyone there is the friendliest and kindest people! They all are glad I’m there, and I appreciate that. They are all willing to help and give me reading material that helped them when they were new, which is very thoughtful.

I was able to help organize the handful of us DoD interns to get lunch, which was quite the feat because we can’t email each other yet. I have been emailing people via sticky note recently, which has been wild.

The work highlight of the week for me was getting to work on a real problem with two other people: a mathematician who just jumped into the project and brought me, and an engineer who knew the logistics of the data well.
We worked to do a bit of the background math, then we discussed best approaches and started story boarding our code.
I had never story boarded code on a white board before: outlining where to call functions, do for loops , print statements: that sort of thing. University has gotten me used to theoretical problems without many limiting factors, so it was a change of pace.
I loved this experience because it felt a lot like solving problems with my physics friends back home, but it was also a real application of the problem. I also loved it because the people I was working with were so collaborative and supportive. Another reason I loved it was because it kicked my imposter syndrome right out the window because I came up with some good coding ideas and actually contributed. This gave me a strong foundation to start this internship: confident and on the right foot.

On Friday, after a long work week of trying to be a sponge and take in a lot of material, SPS invited us interns to a symposium! We were all pretty tired, but I think it was good because we were just fun and tired college students instead of strangers at an orientation - like we were a couple days earlier.

After the symposium, I talked a big game about going home to go to bed, but ended up at karaoke night:)
It turns out that a couple of the SPS interns are theater nerds like me. And let me tell you, there is a certain ecstasy to having just finished your first official work week in DC with other physicists and singing “You’ll Be Back” from Hamilton that just drives home the point that you are not in Kansas (Utah) anymore, but you fit in perfectly even if you’re not sure what you’re fitting into.

On Saturday, I decided to swing by my favorite spots in DC. Grace (the SPS intern) came with me to the MLK Library to pick up a couple books. I really enjoyed being there with someone else who also appreciates books.

After the library, we did some meandering around Chinatown and right near the archway was this very cool drumline trying to fundraise. Their energy was unmatched and they turned the entire intersection into a party!

Grace had to go, but I went on to the mall. I love DC, and being back on the mall feels like saying hi to an old friend at this point. However, a spring storm was picking up by then so I crowded by the base of the Washington Monument for cover.

The flags around the monument were all fully unfurled in the wind, and each one was angled just a little differently. It looked exactly like a vector field and suddenly, Calc 3 made sense!

After the storm died down and I was drenched, I started to make my way back home. I passed the pond next to the WWII Memorial. There were little families of mamma ducks wrangling their ducklings into the water and it was so cute.

The rest of my planned stops were cut short due to the fact my contacts didn’t take to the rain very kindly, but I will save those adventures for another day.

On Sunday, I was able to reconnect with friends from last summer and friends from Utah I wasn’t expecting to see! Having those connection adds another layer of coziness to DC that makes this place so special to me.

TAKEAWAYS:

I think if I could just sum up this first week in a sentence I would say, “Everyone was so nice!” Which probably isn’t the exciting DoD intern takeaways you might have been expecting, but for me it always just comes down to the people. No matter how big or small an organization is, it’s always about making friends along the way so that you can all succeed together!

And I think that is the best gift SPS has given to me: to see that even in important or prestigious situations that give you anxiety, people are just people so do good and be grateful for the good that people do.

I can’t wait to tell you about next week!

Much love,
Sunny

Entry 2 (June 2-3) The Little Things

Hello!
& Welcome back to my blog!

I’m writing to you from Tuesday, June 3 instead of Sunday night before blogs are posted. It turns out if you work for the government, they want to review what you say first, so I will be jumping on a new blog schedule starting now.

The last time I blogged was Sunday, June 1 so it has only been a couple of days.

After a bit of thought about what I would say about only 2 days of work, I realized that this is a prime opportunity to focus in on the little things that I have enjoyed so far.

I might not normally get to tell you about them, but in this case, I’m hoping to give you a glimpse into the small joys and tender mercies that brighten my time here!
For those of you in STEM, you can take Entry 2 as a derivative (tiny part), so you can get a pulse on my overall slope (direction), and you can even use it to formulate Euler’s formula (using a bunch of tiny parts to get a feel for the overall direction) to understand my path.
Or if you like cooking references instead: take Entry 2 as the seasoning that is subtle throughout my experience here.

So assume that even when I zoom back out, all these little great moments are happening and they brighten my overall experience, even if I don’t zoom in on them.
Fair warning, since it’s not a narrative as much as a collection of moments, transitions will be scarce so bear with me, and welcome to my train of thoughts (and be grateful Ozzy Osbourn is not the conductor).

So my first thing that I wanted to share is that I really enjoy not being allowed to use my phone in the Pentagon. Always having my phone around adds some drag (friction) to life for me sometimes, so it makes me kinda grateful to put it in the little box and I don’t have to worry because everyone else put away their phones too so it’s just people being people at work. (Also, I’ve been trying to break my Spotify dependence so this helps haha)

On that note, getting back to my Spotify on the way home makes listening to music even better, instead of a given. So on the way home from work, I was on the metro coming out of a tunnel into all this green space and trees. There was green everywhere I looked and even these little bunnies running and frolicking along. Right then, “Ribs” by Lorde came into my earphones. (Now, if you don’t know this song pretty please go listen to it and feel. Or if you don’t want to do that, do a quick search about all the video essays and online discussion about this song. It’s truly a masterpiece.) So listening to this song while taking the metro home, in DC, from the Pentagon, in all this green, watching little bunnies frolick. It was a lovely little moment that reminded me about how beautiful life is.

Also, I get so excited every morning when I walk in! For the most part, I’m still trying to get the sleepies out of my eyes, but then I walk into the majestic front door with the huge “Welcome to the Pentagon” letters hanging above all the armed services’ flags. All of a sudden, I just perk up and there’s this huge smile on my face because I really love it here!

As a girl in the world, I’m pretty used to looking over my shoulder but I feel so safe in the Pentagon. It’s like all the hypervigilance leaves my body because I know I can relax there. Even in the food court (which I’m fairly wary of in malls, campus, ect) I know I don’t have to keep an eye over my shoulder. It’s such a relaxing thing for me because it takes the mental load off of being on alert.

Another thing about the Pentagon in general is that absolutely everything has a pentagon shape on it, which I find really funny. Here’s some obscure things that are heavily branded: recycling bins, bathroom mirrors (“please wash hands” signs inside the shape), and most signs in general are in a pentagon shape.
Either someone got trigger happy with pentagon shapes, it’s a tongue in cheek thing, or it was just easiest if anyone said “name a shape for this sign” to say “A Pentagon!”

Which reminds me, there are many fabulous places to eat there. There is a sandwich shop which has a sandwich called The Pentagon. I can’t remember exactly what is on it, but I think it’s fun there’s a Pentagon sandwich too (though not shaped like one, oddly).

Last week, I got the chance to go to a cool event and see to a couple 3 star generals in the Space Force! It was really cool to be there and understand more about the Space Force and how it operates and what the general vibe is: which is a pretty dang good one, in my opinion! :)
One of the 3 star generals spoke. She focused on how being a good leader means taking the time to understand and know those that you are leading. From there, you can allocate tasks and missions to those you know who can handle that load at that moment in their lives, and the lives of their families. She talked about making sure, as a leader, you get the right people for the right job and everyone can contribute in their own way. I loved hearing this because it is fabulous advice! I also loved hearing from her because there is something about her (and many of the general’s I’ve seen/met) where they are magnetic leaders. Listening to her, I could tell that she leads with care, intention, purpose. She didn’t even speak for that long, but she might be one of my heroes, I won’t lie. There was that thing about her that made me instantly look up to her.

Speaking of Space Force, there are a couple Space Force people on my team and they are really cool. They are very kind and fun to be around, which I am very grateful for. I enjoy talking to them about their life paths (they both went from Air Force to Space Force) and how they ended up at CAPE. They are good humored, and frankly so is everyone I’ve met!
Speaking of military, there are all these high ranking people walking around the office all day. I’ve been scrambling to pick up what each insignia means because I realized there are a lot of important people I interact with, daily.
The Executive Assistant of my office and I had a couple of good chats about when she was first starting work at CAPE. She had to pick up rankings quickly too. She’s also been a great connection here, and I get excited to say hi to her when I walk in every morning!

PS, it’s been so interesting to talk to people who actually have call signs, like from Top Gun. I knew that was a thing, and I’ve researched it a bit, but it’s been cool to meet people that actually have call signs!

Work, right now, is a lot of readings because I still don’t have computer access. I have quickly learned there is no shortage to printed slide shows!
Since I don’t have computer access, I can’t send a message to the other interns to see if they want to go to lunch together. So one day I asked the Executive Assistant to call the other intern’s office, to ask if he wanted to go to lunch. It felt a lot like when I was a kid and had to ask my mom to call my friend’s mom to ask if they could come play. Hopefully, the computer access comes soon: to improve my autonomy.

Something else I really enjoy is the commute in the morning and people watching. There are a lot of people going in a lot of directions. The common thread is that they seriously slay with their outfits, and I love to see it! I, myself, also enjoy wearing business clothes every day - as opposed to my college outfits which land all over the scale. It’s been fun so far!

I’ve been working very hard to be a sponge and learn all I can. A lot of what they are teaching me is how the DoD is organized and how the budget works. Something I have found interesting is how the checks and balances woven throughout The Constitution are in pretty much everything in the government! I did not realize that. For example, CAPE is all about civilians having the chance to analyze budget without the bias that comes with being a military member - especially from a home team branch. So you have civilians checking and balancing military members. Then, you also have career people checking and balancing politically appointed people. This is a way to balance the Executive Branch while also allowing for consistency in the overall structure of the organization.
This is really cool to me, as a Political Science major, because I will start looking harder for how and where else principles of The Constitution are applied throughout the government.

Oh, here’s a great little moment for you guys: in Entry 1, I talked about how nervous I was to start at the Pentagon. Before my first day, I was waiting for my train and feeling so nervous I had to pull out the inhaler. My train pulls up. The doors open, and right in front of me - exiting the train - are two SPS interns! I had only met them the day before, but seeing friends made me feel much better. And let’s be real, what are the odds they were coming off of my train right in front of me? It was completely a tender mercy.

After work on Monday, and a little fun moment with friends, I went to the top floor of my building and watched the city as the sun set. I was listening to my music and it was beautiful to watch the clouds, people, cars, planes, and monuments in the setting light. I haven’t gotten too many chances to slow down and realize I’m in DC, but this was one of those good moments. I collect those moments close to my heart.

I will say, when I tell people I’m coming from Utah, they kind of go “woah, out west!” and nothing could mentally prepare me for the concept that being from Utah could add “diversity” to a group. To me, it’s Utah - not that deep. But I appreciate the enthusiasm haha!

I also finally have my room set up! My mom insisted on sending me a super long strand of fairy lights . I wasn’t as sold on it as she was, but that’s because since my only child is a cat, I don’t yet have the special mom-sense that she does. And boy, did that sense come in clutch! Moms always know. My room and bathroom are soooooo cozy, homey, relaxing with the fairy lights. I’m very grateful that she looks out for me. <3

Oh! Ok guys, this is a great moment. It is standard office behavior, but there are these fabulous printed memes hanging on the cubicle walls. My favorite one is this graph of an upside down parabola . Time is on the x-axis. Amount of math is on the y-axis. On the going up part of the parabola, it has all the maths someone has to take in engineering - as they get progressively harder. Then the slope drops down and it’s just “excel,” as time has gone on. It means that when you’re younger, you have to do all this crazy math for ‘training’ then all of a sudden it doesn’t even matter because you just do spreadsheets all day. I can appreciate that dry take on STEM in the workplace.

Today, the other intern - that I’m cubicle neighbors with - and I were talking about how slow the computer access process is. He seems a bit quiet, but maybe we just haven’t gotten to talk much. So I make a comment about the slow process and he looks at me and says “type shit.” I laughed seriously too hard. It was not that funny of a thing to say, but I think I’ve been working so hard to not venture into any GenZ brain-rot slang at the office, so it was a bit of a brain shock to reminded me other interns are peers and it’s good to have those culture connections - even if it’s internet culture. I’m glad to be surrounded by DoD interns and SPS interns that help ground me in having fun and being silly sometimes.

Also, I don’t have any pictures for you guys, but I think SPS requires at least one per week…so I have brought you the most exciting equivalent! Drum roll please!
*fake trumpet noise but like the awkward one people do when they just say “du-du-du-dun!!”*
A screenshot mom took of FindMyIPhone telling her I’m at the Pentagon!
Aunt Jessie said Entry 1’s pictures of me at the Pentagon worried her because I was looking too thin, so hopefully this helps her see I am healthy and doing fine haha

So you can see that I am well and I am having fun. Not every moment is huge, but every moment matters to me. I am working to make the most of it, and making great connections!

Much love,

Sunny

Entry 3 (June 4-10) Me & The Girls

Hello!
It’s great to have you back!
This week, I had a lot of great moments.
I’m finally getting into the swing of things.
With the swing of things though comes a reintroduction to the highs, lows, and neutral
ground.
Beginning an internship in a big city is fabulous. However, the high energy newness is not sustainable and can get draining if you don’t radically accept the new way of living.
I last wrote to you from Tuesday. Wednesday is when things started to especially pick
up.
Most of Wednesday was average, though I’ll be honest, since I didn’t have computer
access and my calendar was on a sticky note my boss put on my desk which has since
found its way to the trash, I can’t really remember the specifics of what I did that day.
I do know though that near the end of the day, everyone in CAPE was called to an All-
Hands. It was an awards ceremony where the Director of CAPE spoke
about the place and importance of CAPE in the DoD.
I loved the opportunity to see the entire department and get a feel for who the people
are, outside of our cubicles. The awards ceremony was fun to watch! My boss got a
couple awards, and even a nomination for a peer award! It was cool to see that the rest
of CAPE thinks he’s as cool as I do!
After the All-Hands, we trekked far to a remote jungle bar for happy hour. I say jungle,
but I’m pretty sure it’s actually always just that green and humid next to the Potomac.
Happy hour was great! I felt very Utah, with my can of Dr Pepper in hand.
If anyone there was from the west, they would have for sure laughed at me for being so Utah, but thank goodness no one there knew the about the Dr Pepper cult of the west coast. It is too bad they didn’t serve any dirty sodas though…
I got to experience the very Intern moment of not knowing I was talking to a high up
boss while everyone watched, with humor. In my defense, the high up boss was one of
the coolest ladies I have met, and I had an inkling she was important just by her poise,
so I wasn’t completely oblivious :)
There was a girl there in my conversation circle who was super generous and invited
me to a Nats game after happy hour. Now listen, I was pretty sleepy and in work
clothes, but you know I’m not missing the opportunity to hang out with work girlies, especially
when my co-workers are predominantly young dads.
In my dress shoes, pencil skirt, and cashmere sweater we trekked back through the
jungle (Potomac river bank) and to the Nats game. We got hotdogs, fries, and watched
a very average Nats game where it was 0-0 until the 7th inning.
Hanging out with the girlies was so fun!! They are also in their 20’s so I loved hearing their perspectives on CAPE and DC. I super appreciated their takes and their advice! They were so nice, and I was so grateful they invited me along.
Thursday was low key. I was grateful because I did have a couple blisters from the night
before.
Thursday evening, however, was a different story.
On Thursday evening, SPS hosted us interns on a Potomac dinner cruise!
A dinner cruise?
A dinner cruise. On the Potomac. On a double decker boat.
Let me begin with, though I was having fun, my internal monologue was ‘I grew up too
poor for this, what is going on?’ Pushing past that, it was a great experience!
SPS is so epic for setting that up and inviting us! We started with drinks and hanging
out, followed by dinner on the lower deck while we watched the Washington Monument on the
right side of the boat and planes land at Regan Airport on the left side of the boat. The
planes were so near my mind was blown!
Getting to network and hang out with everyone was such a great experience! There
were a couple familiar faces from my time as an SPS AZC (Associate Zone Councilor),
and it was great to catch up with them!
The boat portion of the evening ended with dancing and dessert back on the upper deck, in the sunset. After we got off the boat, many of us went on to meander down the boardwalk to a cute little arcade-restaurant-bar. We crowded around the tables and hung out.
Now, as previously mentioned, I was exhausted. I was very glad for the fun, but living at
the high energy state of ‘yay DC! yay friends!’ and being a yes-(wo)man can drain you
fast. My table’s conversation veered into sensitive territory for me, and I didn’t have the
sleep tank filled for any emotional tenacity. My eyes filled with tears, and thank goodness,
only a couple people noticed.
One of the SPS interns who noticed was a complete ‘girl’s girl.’ She offered to pull me aside to the bathroom. She was so kind and totally there for me. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, so instead we talked about being Swifties.
I feel like in the movies, there’s always that girl crying in the bathroom while the friends
are trying to have a nice time out. And it wasn’t so fun to be that girl, but also being that
girl and having a girl’s girl helping me out - talking about Taylor Swift while I fix my
mascara - was a moment that I think will stay with me awhile.
Friday was a day of rest and more girl power. Because I still didn’t have computer
access, my boss told me to work on some coding from home and come in for an
afternoon meeting. I got have some alone time and just focus on fighting my computer
to download Anaconda. I was glad to have that time.
My afternoon meeting was with some of my favorite CAPE people, which made me glad. After the meeting, one of the CAPE people took the time to answer any and all questions I had. It was not scheduled and she did not have to do that, but she chose to and she is so kind for that. She and I even talked about what it’s like being a working mom in DC, the importance of dating and marrying a supportive partner, and surrounding yourself with good mentors who will get you where you want to go in life.
We also talked about imposter syndrome and something she said stuck with me:
“Prestige gets your foot in the door but it doesn’t keep your foot in the door. People
skills, professionalism, and good questions opens the doors for you.” (Which is not a
direct, exact quote so don’t come after me, but it’s how it landed in my heart).
She totally helped me feel overall better about my ever-changing life as a 21 year old
girl in the world. Our conversation was a great way to round out the end of my second
week here at The Pentagon.
But wait! There’s more!
On Friday night the pinnacle of my weekend occurred. I got to watch Star Wars and knit
(well, she crocheted) with one of my best friends. Now, she and I – despite both going to
school in Utah – have not got a chance to hang since last summer when we watched
Episode 1. However, like Anne of Green Gables and Dianna, we recognize eachthoer as kindred spirits and despite time passing, we always pick up laughing wherever we left off.
She is a complete Star Wars nerd, who loves the political drama aspect of it. She has
read all the books and seen all the shows. I, myself, do not seek out Star Wars content.
Instead, I seek out people I like to be around and ask them to nerd out about it and
teach me what they know. Our friendship works well.
We watched Episode 2 and a couple Tales of the Jedi (for additional context) :) and
between the blanket she’s crocheting and the sweater I’m knitting, no yarn was safe
haha
I loved hearing her insights and all the fun facts! We even jump cut to a
deleted scene, and I totally understand the Padme hype. She was totally undersold in
the Prequels.
On Saturday, I was able to facetime the girls from home: mom & the cat! I hadn’t called
home in awhile, so it was great to catch up! That evening, a couple interns and I had the
privilege of going to a symphony at The University of Maryland! They did a rendition of
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream It was beautiful, and such a great
opportunity, since I have never been to a symphony before!
At church the next morning, I met a girl who performed in the symphony and
learned more about the history of the program!
The last story I have for you guys is actually with a Utah friend. He and I are in a bigger
friend group back at school, and I refer to everyone in it as ‘girlypop.’ We all came
together this year, so it was tragic to break up the group for the summer. We all decided
to come together to play Minecraft throughout the summer. The rest of the group
couldn’t make it though. But it was still ‘epic’ (which is actually a word I stole from his
vernacular) because I got to hear about his astronomy research lab! I love CAPE, but I
do miss astronomy sometimes, so I appreciated him telling me about his epic Monte
Carlo simulations and black holes! We played Minecraft, while I sat in my dorm’s
courtyard in the sunset, and it was an epic evening, getting to chatter it up with a fellow
girlypop friend.
So you can see that this week was a lot to take in, but it was mostly a lot of great
moments of connection, true kindness, and friendship. I love the girlies and girlypops I
was able to hang out with.
As I write this from my office – now I finally have computer access – I am getting
messages back and forth from the Nats game girlies, on a group chat named “the
girlies,” as they teach me about the sticker variety on Teams Messages.
So between my connections here and Taylor Swift getting custody of her work again,
this week has been chalk full of girl power and good vibes!
I’m glad I’m getting into the swing of things and making/strengthen friendships.
I hope your week is full of good vibes and friendship too!

Much love,
Sunny

]

Entry 4 (June 11-22) Keep Moving Forward

This week was full of ups and downs.
Since there is so many things that have happened in the past 12 days, I’ll give you a tapestry of moments rather than specifics.

A funny moment: The structure of the Pentagon goes: rings, corridors, apexes, courtyard in the middle. The apexes connect everything, so that is where they put the amenities. The apexes are also where displays are and retirement parties happen. So I had gone to lunch with the other CAPEterns (CAPE interns) and was on my way through the apex to fill my water bottle. However, there was a huge and pristine retirement party happening for ¿a general?. They had an American flag cake and beautiful dresses and the tone was slightly weepy but hopeful.
However, I am now just a bureaucrat trying to fill my water on a Friday afternoon. The thing about the apexes, though, is that you can walk right into a retirement party and by the time you realize it, it’s already too late and everyone is close enough to see the panic in your eyes!
So I’m already in the middle of this thing, I do the turn back - turn forward - not sure if it’s too late to just keep walking through - or to try to run away.
And right as I’m turning in circles, they start a prayer!
Now here’s the thing: after 21 years of Sunday school, if I hear the start of a prayer, my kneejerk reaction is hunker down, fold arms, bow head.
So now, I’m in the middle of a retirement party for someone I don’t even know and I’m hunkered down for the prayer! It was a serious prayer too. For a minute I thought it was a funeral the way they were talking about this man in the past tense. In fact, I’m still not sure it wasn’t a funeral!
The best part is, that was like a 6 minute long prayer. So about 3 minutes in, I think I should probably go but you know I’m in too deep at that point. I can’t just keep walking and fill up my water.
Eventually, the prayer ends and I say a confused, “Amen?” and just turn back to the hall I came from: away from my office, without any water.

Foreshadowing moment: One morning, I was desperately trying to get out of the door on time but all the clothes I put on were too damp and my hair was too humidified to deal with. I eventually went with the black Ariats and a french braid just to get out of the door. I thought that it was just part of the East Coast summer: ‘I’m just not used to the humidity.’
Adventure moment: SPS took a tour of NIST, and it was great! I loved spending time with the other interns! My favorite moment was going into the sound proof room! It was very peaceful and weird to be in there where sound doesn’t reverberate and travel the way we’re used to.
Tragic moment: It rained and poured so bad that day.
When I got back to the apartment in the evening, it was raining…but the rain was inside my apartment. The vents were dripping, the ceiling was dripping, the walls had water running down them, the door frames were dripping. It was bad. It was freezing too. So it was cold and wet. Our apartment was literally ‘hell frozen over.’
Turns out that macbooks have no resistance to raining apartments :’(

Random Connections moments:
1) On a weekend adventure I randomly met another Pentagon intern who works in the Joint Chiefs office! What are the odds?!
2) There is someone at CAPE who grew up in Salt Lake, and we were put together for a lunch appointment. It was so nice getting to understand more about his transition from living out west to moving to DC. I felt very much so uplifted and it’s just fun to gossip about the construction projects in Utah haha
3) I got to go to Spaceball (which is where everyone involved in Space in the DC area comes together for a Nats game to network and hang, it was great and I had fun meeting lots of awesome people!) on my way to take my computer to the Apple store. Though Spaceball was great, I was also overwhelmed because of apartment/computer stuff and had been in the sun for hours. I was really hoping to run into friends. As I’m waiting for the metro, two elders (missionaries) step off a train and I was so relieved. I asked them to say a prayer with me, because I needed the support. Running into them made me feel like no matter what happened, God knew where I was at and He was watching out for me.
4) To double down on that feeling that God had my back, after running into the missionaries, at my station I ran into a girl I lived with in DC last summer from The U! It was great to have that extra boost before getting bad news at the apple store.

5) This just also goes in the random category because it’s so bizarre, but the Hatch House – the house in DuPont my school bought that I lived at last year – caught fire recently too! So at church they told me about the fire and I told them about my ‘flood.’ Man! It was a rough week for Utah students, to say the least!

Silly moment:
I was waiting to meet up with my friend for another Star Wars/knitting night. She lives at the Hatch House in DuPont. The thing about DuPont is that they have these crazy huge rats. Absolutely everywhere. So I’m waiting outside, in the evening, in DuPont (which is the prime rat combo) and this rat comes sprinting at me! Very large for a rodent. This thing could have been the younger brother of the ROUS’s from The Princess Bride.
Anyways, so I’m not really sure what my thought process was except rats and cats don’t get along and it obviously doesn’t care that I’m human because it’s charging me. So I lean towards it – like maybe 1.5 yards away at this point – and I hiss at it. Like an actual cat. And it immediately takes a u-turn and runs back exactly where it came from! It didn’t care I was stomping my feet or anything, but the second I hissed at the rat (which is so silly) it just said ‘no thank you’ and turned back around.

Friends Moment: I got to play Mariokart with some other SPS interns. Two of them were really good, and were competing for 1 st place. The other intern and I were veryyy bad, and were competing for last place. I appreciated just being silly and having fun with friends!

Up and Down moment: The recent stressors drove me to religion, and I took the trek to the DC Temple to do baptisms. However, when I finally got there I walked in ready to feel peace and do service, but they tell me they just started closing early! First of all, there is nothing about that on the website. Second of all, after so much stress and trekking in the heat, I broke down and cried. I felt pretty pathetic.
However, I went back home where I finally found some peace knitting in the courtyard at sunset listening to a podcast. “This American Life” is this NPR podcast I grew up listening to. It tells beautiful and human stories of, well, American life. Hearing other people’s stories of struggles, triumphs, confusion, and embarrassments helped me feel better because stuff like this: flooded apartment, dead computer, places closing early, charging rats, they’re just the texture that makes up the tapestry of This American Life.
Everyone has stressors and successes. Taking a turn in some struggles – especially during periods of great success, like an awesome internship – is to be expected.

As you can see, my glimpse of peace gave me some perspective.

Takeaways:
I’m still not sure if I have to move apartments again or if I have to buy a new computer, but I do know that everyone feels a little crazy all the time, and that’s ok. The best we can do is the best we can do.
In the words of Walt Disney – via Meet the Robinsons – “Keep Moving Forward.”

Much love,
Sunny

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Entry 5 (June 23-29) Mosaic of the People I Love

There’s this quote I’ve seen a couple time on the internet places that goes:
“have you ever noticed you pick up little habits and phrases from the people you love? it’s no wonder our hearts are so easily broken when people leave. we become a reflection of the people that we care about and those personality traits stick with us even if the people don’t . . . I make my ramen the way a friend taught me in eleventh grade. Every fall, I listen to a playlist made for me by a boy I drove across the border to hook up with. I eat sushi because a girl who won’t talk to me anymore made me try it, and Indian food because my best friend’s parent’s parents ordered for me before I knew what I liked. There are movies I love because someone I loved loved them first. I am a mosaic of everyone I’ve ever loved, even for a heartbeat.”
I think about that quote a lot.
It describes this non-defined part of being a human, and I wish the english language had a word for it.
This week I felt a lot like a mosaic of the people I love.
On Monday morning, I listened to “Hole in the River (house demo)” by my favorite band Crowded House. Crowded House’s Greatest Hits were my family’s favorite CD.

On the way home from work on Wednesday, I ran into a farmer’s market, and picked up a fruit tart. When I got home, I found a nice window to sit in that faced the mall and I watched the hassle of everyone else getting home in the afternoon. My roommate from freshman year is totally a foodie and she taught me that to really experience a place you have to make sure to be intentional about taking in the food. I would have never thought to experience places through food because that just isn’t my family’s genera, but I love it and I love having friends that teach me new things like that. I am really grateful that I’ve been able to learn new ways of experiencing the world through friends in college.
Right after that little serine moment though, the fire alarm went off and the whole building evacuated though :/
On Thursday, I was eating lunch in the Pentagon’s courtyard.
Two funny things happening:
The first is that I saw a baby squirrel. This was funny because how the heck did a baby squirrel get into the Pentagon’s courtyard? There’s grass and trees but they aren’t connected to any outside grass and trees since the Pentagon is the perimeter of the courtyard. Additionally, what surrounds the outside of the Pentagon is concrete jungle. It is for the most part a lot of parking lots.

The second funny thing that happened is that I saw a spotted lanternfly bug in the courtyard. I’d never seen one of these before...
Let’s just say that I’m starting to miss the Nevada bugs, who keep their limbs to a modest amount, they keep to themselves, are all brown and black, and die easily with the whack of a shovel....anyways, these bugs are creepy and feisty and eccentric. One was headed towards this girl who was sitting next to me and so I told her and she said “oh those bugs are awful! I heard they are bad for the economy!”
I went back to my desk with thoughts of bugs and how one could be bad for the economy. I finally realized that she meant environment, and that made...so much more sense!
It did get me thinking though about how the Navy deals with bugs on their ships and especially their submarines. I realized that I work in the Pentagon and don’t have to just search google for these types of questions, so I walked over to the submarine experts at CAPE and asked them if spraying for bugs gets factored into the cost of ships and subs. Turns out, no, submarines don’t get sprayed for bugs. Then I got to hear a couple of fabulous anecdotes about rats and bedbugs in the Navy.
Working at CAPE is pretty weird sometimes because you can think of pretty much any type of question about the military and there is an expert two cubicles away who will answer it for you.
On Friday, some of my besties from Utah came to town! I couldn’t wait to get off work to hang out with them! We walked the National Mall and got dinner together. Two of them are my besties at the University of Utah and two of them are East Cost University girlypops, but all of them are high school friends with each other.
On Saturday, I had gotten talked into going on a run with the Utah friends in the morning. Two of them are very serious about running so we found one of the reflecting pools next to the Capitol is the perfect distance for laps, so we ran around and around it. I tapped out pretty early and one of them had an injury so we sat and chattered and cheered the other friend on. It was a lovely morning.
That afternoon, we went to the Udvar Hazy Air and Space Museum. One of the friends is a huge aviation nerd and actually works for Delta and the rest of us are all STEM nerds of varying degrees (get it? degrees? hahaha) so we all could appreciate the engineering marvels in the museum.
I had re-read Chris Hadfield’s An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth before this summer so when I saw the Canada Arm next to the shuttle, I made sure to give the friends and enthusiastic run down on what we were looking at :)
One of the friends is a Hill-tern (intern on Capitol Hill) and he was in the office all Saturday because they were planning to vote on the Big Beautiful Bill. Traffic held us up on the way home, but 20 minutes before the Capitol closed for visitors, he got us in for a quick tour. We basically sprinted (or rolled in some of our cases) the Capitol. It was beautiful, and though I apologize to my wheelchair user friend, it was pretty epic pushing and drifting his chair through the halls of the US Capitol while we all rushed to both see the sights and not get yelled at by security guards for staying too late.
We had lunch at Union Center where the two East Coast school kiddos told the wildest stories about the traditions of the older schools on the East Coast. Never have I ever thought that all the weird traditions and “clubs” from Gilmore Girls and Dead Poets Society were real! But they totally are!!
We were all pretty sleepy after such a long hot day, so we parted ways for the evening and I spent the sunset in the courtyard sewing and listening to Lorde’s new album.
On Sunday, I did not get the memo that it was patriotic Sunday so I didn’t dress up red white and blue for church. I was in green instead...but it was still a lovely Sunday and the church friends and I took pictures afterwards. I felt very loved by them, and I am super grateful to be surrounded by lots of different groups of friends this summer. I walked home with them part ways until I intercepted the Utah friends and then hung out with them for the rest of the afternoon.
We walked around Georgetown - finally tried Levain Bakery (a DC classic) - and ended up wandering Georgetown Campus. Let me just say that I’m pretty sure that was the hottest day of the Universe. Direct sunlight at 3pm was not smart of us, but the memories were still priceless.
After awhile we called it quits and got dinner and went back to the friend’s hotel to chill. Since I am still without a computer and taking a class online, they let me borrow one of theirs. I devoured a couple week’s worth of work while we recovered from the heat.
After being an academic weapon, we all went to the hotel’s rooftop bar and had mocktails while the sky was deciding if it wanted to rain or not. It was so lovely to hang out with them and it was so lovely to be with good friends while we watched the sunset on the DC skyline. I’m really grateful to be surrounded by great friends who value me and are all silly geese with me.
Like I said earlier, we are all mosaics of the people we love and have loved. I thought about a lot of people this week that remind me of songs or food, and I’m really glad that their journeys intertwined with mine so that I could experience life a bit differently and see things through their eyes. I’m also really grateful for the new friends and connections I am making and seeing their impact on my life now, and knowing that years from now I might think of a song, stop by a farmers market because of them, or see an airplane and think of them.
Being a person - especially a young intern in DC - is weird and lovely and pretty much everything in between, but having good friends to ground you while you’re trying to metabolize life is a blessing.

Much love,

Sunny

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Entry 6 (June 30-July 6) Buhler? Do I know you?

This week was the busiest yet. It was a week of friends.
On Monday afternoon, I came home from work and hung out with the Utah friends who were still in town. They had already had a big day and so did I, so we just hung out and chattered while half falling asleep. Everyone seems to say that since we’re youngin’s we should have forever energy but man a 9-5 or touring DC in the summer will really zap that energy from you haha
On Monday morning, I met a BYU person at the Pentagon! He was minding his own business and wearing a BYU lanyard. So of course, as a Utahn, I had to bug him and go “Oh my gosh, BYU?? What is up man??” And he was pretty stoked to meet another Utah person too. It was fun because we have a similar schedule, so I see him about the same place same time at least once a week.
That is a fairly common theme in DC for me this summer: if I see someone in BYU merch I either say “omg no way, I go to school at Utah!” and the they are also very excited. If it’s someone who is more my age, I just automatically start giving them crap about how BYU is not as cool as UofU...and the funny thing is that they typically agree. Someone should look into that phenomenon for me haha It could finally settle The Holy War.
Later that afternoon, I ran into a family in the Pentagon courtyard decked out in BYU merch and had pretty much the same conversation.
On Tuesday, one of my best friends from last summer was having a birthday party! It was us girlies who set up a surprise party in her boyfriend’s apartment while her boyfriend took her to dinner. He gave one of us the keys so we could set it up. Here is a life lesson to men: don’t let a group of girls hang out in your apartment if you don’t want opinions on how you should re-decorate/rearrange the apartment and also if you don’t want them to clean your kitchen and reorganize your dishes. Not to victim blame, but he did have it coming lol
The party was lovely though and near the end we had a moment where we all went around and said why we love the birthday girl, and let me preface with she truly is one of the most spectacular people to exist. It was lovely to bring a bunch of people together - many of us strangers to each other but completely aligned over our love for this girly.
To bring things back to a bit more lifelike story though, life is always messier than shining moments, and shining moments seems to be sandwiched between some miserable ones.

Right before the party, I had been on the phone fighting with housing as they hadn’t communicated within their own system and were mad at my roommate and I for “squatting” in that temporary apartment. When I got home from the party, roomie told me housing said we had to be moved out that night but they had taken away our access to the flooded apartment (that was still not safe to live in). So from 12am-1am we didn’t have an apartment we were allowed to stay in. You can imagine the stress this brought. I had to email the Pentagon saying that I was a bit homeless at the moment, and wouldn’t be able to make it in in the morning...which is a wild sentence.
I stayed home from work in the morning to figure out what to do and eventually my tears made their way up the chain until someone with authority got GW to chill and give us a safe apartment to live in.
When I finally came into work that afternoon, my team was extra kind to me and had gotten me a soda, which was very thoughtful of them.
Since life doesn’t stop when things happen, I found myself on a group date that evening with the girlies from the birthday party. It was a really great time!
We just went out for ice cream but I felt very young adult with all the fun and awkwardness that accompanies a group/first date.

Pivoting back to work, something I’ve noticed about working at CAPE is that there are a lot of people who are super high ranking in the military. There are Colonel’s everywhere, and lots of promotion ceremonies. All the active duty personnel have their ranks on their uniforms, so it’s easy to see who you’re talking to. The secret in CAPE though is that there’s a bunch of civilians that are super high ranking too. A point of entertainment among CAPE is to watch us interns meet these high ranking civilians without knowing that they are the equivalent of Generals, and then only telling us interns after our conversations with these General-Civilians. It’s happened a couple times now, where I am just my normal Utah-friendly-self and introduce myself and ask the person what they do in CAPE (or they send me to meet this high up person) and the second the meeting or conversation is over they say, “oh hey did you know that they are actually the equivalent of a two-star general?” and I go “uh-oh, I had no clue!” I mean there is no disrespect in my interactions or anything I would have done differently...but I can see how that is pretty entertaining for other “CAPEsters.”
On Thursday, a member of my team and I were able to meet up and do a networking meeting.
He has a PhD in physics, so we were able to talk about physics career paths. I really appreciated his perspective on starting out pursuing physics then pivoting into government. He and his wife met in physics grad school, and they both left academia for government after their PhDs. I liked hearing his experience with the value of a physics background in the workplace.
He was also super sweet and connected me with a bunch of his contacts like space policy people at the State Department and people who were super high up in NASA Administrative roles. He also connected me with his wife so that I would have connections with other women in STEM and physics. That was such a kind detail of our meeting because it isn’t very often that a man in STEM asks if you have enough female mentors.

I also learned that the University of Utah had a cold case break through from a physics student who went missing in the 1960’s. I can’t believe that the UofU physics department has been gatekeeping this lore! After blowing up all my Utah physics friends’ phones, I went to institute.
With all these networking conversations I’ve been trying to discern how I should prioritize my grad school applications: where should I apply? What do I apply to? What field should I apply in? How do I factor in knowing this is the hardest year ever to get into physics PhD program?
These networking conversations have been super eye opening and I have been able to hear the backgrounds and advice of people who are in the fields I want to be in, have the degrees I think I want, and do the stuff I know I want to do.
A tender mercy was finding this scripture that says:
D&C 3:3 “remember, remember that it is not the work of God that is frustrated, but the work of men;”
It was a nice reminder that people can make plans but at the end of the day God’s work will get done and I just gotta make sure I’m in the right place, at the right time, asking the right questions. Which is much easier than making sure I make the “right” decisions and burn myself out trying to take every single opportunity.
Friday was the 4th of July!!!
For those of you from my hometown, you know that I get so hyped for 4th of July. It is absolutely my favorite holiday because it is whatever you make of it and the whole goal is to have a freaking partyyy!!! :D
So in true Sunny-on-the-4th-of-July fashion, I woke up at 5am for patriotic makeup.
I guess you get roped into going running once, you get roped into going running again, so I ran a 5k with a friend. It was a smaller event than I thought, and it was actually just a local neighborhood tradition. So as my friend and I - and a bunch of families from around the block - ran through this neighborhood, the grandparents on the block were outside waiting to cheer us on. The half way point brought us to a look over point of the Airforce Memorial, which was so beautiful!
We made it back to the host’s backyard where we were welcomed with cheering until everyone came back, and we did a morning flag raising. Someone played the National Anthem on the piano in the living room with the windows open while we all sang outside as the flag went up. I felt very patriotic, and also a lot of endorphins, so it was pretty epic. Then we had a fabulous pancake breakfast with homemade syrup!
Since the DC community is pretty interconnected, a bunch of friends we recognized showed up and someone that used to go to high school with my friend showed up, how wild! It made me feel like, even though I was having pancakes in a stranger’s backyard across the country from “home,” I’m never too far away from new and old friends.

After that, I was pretty hyped on endorphins still (despite having very little sleep) so I decided to join a crew of Utah friends who were in town visiting, very serendipitously! I joined them wandering around the Natural History Museum.
It was a bit of DejaVu because I joined some other Utah friends at the Natural History Museum who happened to be in DC last year too, on the 4th of July...
It was great to be with them, but the sleepiness finally got to me so I left as I started to crash out. I figured I’d walk the Mall on the way home, to check out the festivities.
And boy of boy, did I check out the festivities! I found myself in the crowd anticipating the parade 20 minutes before it started! I was so sleepy, but why not just stay for the parade? I couldn’t get home easily until it was over anyways.
So I called the group of church Utah girlies I’ve hung out with a couple times and made plans to meet up with them at the parade, when the most magical thing happened!
I overheard two college age guys talking about Salt Lake, and I guess I have an extra dose of
nosiness while I’m sleepy, but I said “oh are y’all talking about Salt Lake?? I go to school there!”
and they said, “no way! Us too!!”
And it turns out that they are housemates with the Utah girlies I was on my way to meet up with.
So wild!
I love Utah, but it’s a bit inescapable sometimes ;)
So I had them join the group, and the random Utah boys (who weren’t that random) and the Utah girlies and I all watched the parade together!
The Utah girlies had really outfit planned, and I....had just ran a 5k and ended up at the parade, but they insisted I still be part of their pictures.
I’m not sure what it is with the patriotic theme, but I keep wearing green, like last Sunday with the Utah girlies too...it must be my proximity to the Army in the Pentagon. The Army green is just wearing off on me haha

The parade was great!! But I had already left two groups of friends because I said “I need to lie down” and I still wasn’t lying down, so I went home for real this time and took an epic nap, until firework time!
It turns out though that I slept through B2 flyover, and I think that is my biggest life regret..unfortunately.
For fireworks, I met up with the visiting Utah friends from the Natural History Museum earlier that day and the random Utah boys I had met earlier, for fireworks on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
This was my third year of fireworks on the Mall - in a row - but let me tell you, they never get less impressive or less feeling like the “Freebird” guitar riff (which is very patriotic for those of you outside the meme circles).
The fireworks covered us in ashes, so we went home shaking the ash out of our hair. I said to myself (for the 3rd time that day) “I still have energy.” So I went back to the Utah house to party it up with my friends! However, the second I sat down on the couch, I crashed. I was both too tired to leave and too tired to stay, so to remedy that, I stayed until 2am playing cards on the rooftop with the gang.
It was lovely.
As you can imagine, on Saturday I was pretty delirious. I think I slept the whole day and did some sewing in the evening in the courtyard at sunset. I did watch the movie The Intern though, which was such a sweet movie, and fun since I’m an intern right now.
On Sunday, I had the opportunity to go to dinner at a family friend’s house on Fort Belvoir. It was super nice to spend time with a family and have a home grilled meal. I also loved spending time with them because when I say “family friends” I think I should just say “my aunt and uncle” because we come from the same background and got to reminisce about our days in the small town. It cured my homesickness, which was very nice.
Being busy is nice, but it also takes a lot out of you. I’m pumped to hold the memories close and also sleep them off :)
Much love,
Sunny

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Entry 7 (July 7-13) Finding my Spark
This week, I feel like all the things that really add spark to my life were brought out. I was able to put names to passions and interests I hold in my heart that I didn’t even realize were there.
On Tuesday morning, I had a networking meeting with a fabulous lady I had met at Spaceball.
She had done an Astrophysics Bachelors at Yale and then shifted lanes into Aerospace Engineering, and I wanted to know more about her path and her experiences in STEM and the space community in DC. She was seriously the sweetest person ever! It was also super random that I ran into a Utah friend - that I’d just met - across town on his way to work! DC is such a small town.
She gave me some really great advice to “stay technical for as long as possible” and “choose your offramp from STEM very carefully.” This means that if I’m interested in doing both STEM and policy, I should stay in the lane of STEM until I’m ready to go into more of a policy focus.
This is really wise advice because by staying STEM for as long as possible, you can build more background and reputation in the actual technical side of things. I’ve been getting this advice on almost all sides.
On Wednesday, the most massive downpour of my life happened. DC is so rainy, but I was not mentally prepared to see 30 minutes of the biggest droplets in the highest density I’ve ever seen!

Something I’ve noticed is that when you grow up in Nevada, you have a very different perspective on rain. I know when the “monsoon” seasons are and I tend to forget that the east coast already has plenty of rain, so I get excited because it’s engrained pretty deep that ‘rain is a good thing’ (to quote Luke Bryan).
So in Nevada, when it rains, you go outside and run around and play until the rainbow comes out. So when I got home from work and the thunder clapped and the downpour started, I was pretty excited to go play. Since this was a rainer rain than desert rain, I put on my swimming suit. I convinced my roommate to come run around with me, and it was so epic! We jumped in the inches of rain that were accumulating in the courtyard (it was amazing to see the drainage system in real time, it is really effective).
We came back to the apartment dripping like wet dogs, with smudged mascara, and smiling from ear to ear!
On Thursday, my mentor met up with me to check in on projects. Something really cool that I noticed was how - when I was asking questions - he kept saying “what else?” Instead of “do you have questions?” it was like laying the baseline assumption that I do have other questions, so I didn’t weigh in my own head if the questions I had were “dumb” or “I should just be able to figure them out on my own.” It was a really great moment of mentorship that I appreciated. I didn’t realize how impactful that change in language was, but it made a difference to me as a mentee.
I think I’ll pick that up and take it with me as I go on and take on mentorship positions of my own.
Friday was 7/11 and so of course us SPS interns had to take a little adventure to seven eleven for free slushies.
I can confirm that seven elevens being sketchy and seven elevens being gas stations are correlation, and not causation! This was an astounding scientific discovery because I always figured that the placement of gas stations along highways contributed to their sketchiness, but no...turns out that sketchiness spontaneously generates with the presence of a seven eleven.
So the outing with friends was fun, the store and slushies themself was not so much fun.
On that same strand of thought though, the Pentagon has a bunch of stores...this is established. But get this, there are these little like corner store/gas station/bodega style convenience stores scattered throughout.
There was this one Doctor Who episode I was obsessed with as a kid where there’s this secret door in someone’s house that you could only see out of the corner of your eye - so it stayed a secret. But even if you accidentally spotted it, you forgot about it because you’re not expecting a new door in your house.
Those little stores are the same. They’re these little doors you only briefly catch, and you can see into them that there’s like a whole gas station in there, minus the gas. But the Pentagon is so large that you forget where it is! So either there are 3 of those little stores, or I’ve just seen the same one 3 times. I don’t think I’ll find out if there are many or if I’ve seen the same one over again, but that is truly one of America’s great secrets.

Friday morning I had a “coffee appointment” to meet a very cool woman in Space Policy.
Something had come up that morning so I was running late. The thing about the Pentagon though is no one really knows where stuff is, but you can find your way around based on the good number/ring system they got going on. The biggest tip is if you are trying to make it somewhere quick, go to the inner ring so you can cover ground faster then move to the outer ring when you find which corridor to go down. As a stressed intern though, I forgot all my good sense and ended up sprinting 1⁄2 the Pentagon - in a skirt and dress shoes - around the E ring to make it to my meeting on time. While I was running (hoping no one saw) I was thinking that this must be a cannon event, and sprinting through the Pentagon is much cooler of a story than sprinting through any other building haha
My meeting turned out just fine in the end! The woman I met with was very cool! She and I bonded over our agricultural roots. She had done 4H when she was young, too. I was really glad to meet another farm-type girl in the space-world and the defense-world and I think she was too!
At work on Friday, I had the opportunity to attend a promotion ceremony for someone from CAPE! They were being promoted in the Army to Colonel. The ceremony was so interesting and so cool to attend! I didn’t realize how many traditions there are for the Army or for ceremonies.
One of the high up bosses of CAPE presided over the meeting. She spoke about how much good work the new colonel has done for CAPE and how great of a co-worker he is. Watching her present with so much poise, personality, and good leadership was really inspiring to me.
Seeing that the ranking official was a woman with a PhD really landed with me, especially as a young woman in STEM. I’m always looking for good role models and CAPE really does not disappoint with cool people to look up to! To add to that, the new colonel took the time to shake my hand and say, “Sunny, thank you for coming to my ceremony.” I think I have only spoken to him once or twice, but he remembered my name and was glad I was able to join. That also meant a lot to me.
Right before the promotion ceremony, I was making small talk with another Army CAPE person.
He was surprised to hear I go to The U because he’s from Salt Lake! Neither of us were expecting that at all! We were both very glad to make that connection.
Friday evening, I hung out with my friend and we knit and watched Star Wars!
Doing my Political Science double major was one of the best choices I’ve made. It’s opened up a lot of doors for me. I love the content of most of my classes, but there was always a flavor of PoliSci that I know I’m most passionate about, but I can never put my finger on.
So I was talking to another Army Colonel. He and I have become friends because we like to commiserate on how we are both working on optimization coding projects. We were having one of our nice conversations and he starts comparing aspects of his optimization project to things from game theory like the prisoner’s dilemma. I didn’t know that that was my language until he made that connection, but that is exactly my flavor of PoliSci!

This internship is so cool because I’ve always deeply respected defense, but I was never able to put into words what my interest was: studying political/game theory to then apply that knowledge in STEM and in life. I’m loving working at CAPE because knowledge of STEM and background in political theory and defense come together for pure analytics to create the best systems and best courses of action.
Also making friends with colonels is also just pretty legit haha
There is one Guardian who has really taken it upon himself to mentor me and I super appreciate that. He brings me reading material about the Space Force so we can discuss it later. At our meetings he also opens the floor for any questions I have about the military, CAPE, the world in general. He’s a great mentor. He’s taught me so much about Space Force, and really cleared up a lot of the misconceptions I had from watching the show Space Force. We also once talked about how music from different eras encapsulate different social movements, almost as time capsules of what was important to people during those times. Which is also totally my language.
He is also like crazy smart and I think has like 4 or 5 masters degrees. A lot of his degrees are in game theory and strategy realms.
Another member of SPIN was mentoring me on strategies that factor into decision making.
Something that struck me from his brief was OODA loops (which were created by a past CAPEster). I brought up OODA loops to this Guardian and he really doubled down on my interest in them by breaking them down into sport analogies, which helped me understand and appreciate how clever the strategy is.
This was just another moment of my PoliSci interest of understanding strategy/game theory being brought out, as well as this Guardian really taking me under his wing (even if he’s not in the Air Force anymore...there’s definitely a pun with ‘wing’ and ‘Air Force’ in there somewhere:)).
Later in the week, this Guardian also brought me an official “OSD CAPE” lanyard like a lot of CAPEsters have. I had just gotten a generic “Pentagon” lanyard from the gift shop. But he said, “you’re part of the team, you gotta wear the colors,” which really meant a lot to be to be part of the ‘team’.
By the time Saturday rolled around, I was exhausted. I spent the first half of the day watching movies back to back and knitting. It was the most uninterrupted chill time I’d had in months, and it was glorious. Then, I felt fueled again so I went on a walk/run around the entire National Mall for 3 hours. I made sure to stop at the pond near the WWII Memorial and watch the ducks and the sunset. Around dark time though, I realized that my brain hadn’t fully turned on from earlier in the day and it was dark, I was next to the Capitol, my phone was dying, and I had no food at home. So I did the most natural 21 year old thing to do, and finished my run with a sprint to Chipotle, guessed the nearest metro entrance, and made it home around 10pm with 2% battery to spare. Not my brightest moment but the endorphins and Chipotle were nice!
Here’s a fun tidbit I’ve learned while clocking in everyday. Turns out when you had Spotify playing, then lose service by walking into the Pentagon, then turn off your phone entirely, your Spotify thinks you’re still listening to the same song/artist for the 8+ hours you’re at work. I started getting these notifications telling me that I listened to 40+ hours each week, and now I’m in the top 1% of Crowded House’s listeners world wide! Though I am excited for my Spotify wrapped to reflect that craziness, it is wild how skewed the data will be since that happened every week for 10 weeks.
This week was full of networking meetings that will shape my life, dancing in the rain, learning more about myself and my interests, and feeling appreciated at work. Being a 21 year old CAPEtern is a wild ride, but it is honestly the most impactful experience of my life so far. It’s taught me so much about what I value in life, what I need to feel fulfilled in work, and what I’m truly passionate about. It means a lot to me to be here.
Much love,
Sunny
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Entry 8 (July 14-20) Rest & Social Commentary
This week really went by both so slowly and so quickly that I think I forgot about half of it, but here are the highlights of thoughts and experiences:
Something interesting I’ve noticed with CAPE is the high level combined with the imposter syndrome. CAPE is like this super high level group of people that are high level because of the high quality work that is produced. They have a lot of power, but the people in it don’t see themselves as so cool and powerful. They see a job that needs to be done well and to find the best way to do the job so that it can be done better and quicker the second time.
Another thing about CAPE is that they intentionally bring in people from different backgrounds so that they can get lots of perspectives on how to approach complex problems.
In my conversations with people with vastly different backgrounds and qualifications I found that an engineer with an MBA experiences imposter syndrome the same way that an Army Colonel does. The crazy thing for me - coming in with intern eyes - is that everyone at CAPE is so dang qualified and good at their job. Because of that, I get the sense that at the top of a peak - where everyone is the best - we can all relax into just doing our jobs and collaborating.
In the book How Much is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program 1961–1969 where the need for CAPE is laid out, they talk about how CAPE was set up that way: so that the best people are doing the best job. It totally humanizes my feelings of intimidation as an intern though because seeing the range of people that experience imposter syndrome - and will admit it to an intern - really shows me how humble everyone here is and also shows me that I can also relax and just focus on my job as an intern.

I think all that to say that I’m not so nervous as I was at the beginning of the internship. I’m feeling relaxed into my role and because of that have started sending co-workers memes on Teams to ask if they want to go to lunch...instead of being scared to even ask if they want to go to lunch :)
The end of the internship is creeping up though, so I’m really trying to soak it all in while I can.
Pretty much the whole week I worked on a coding project that makes graphs to show changes in spending from last year to proposed budgets this year.
It’s cool how quickly I’ve learned about the budget process. It is much more complex and nuanced than I realized, so even though I’m just working on coding for graphs, I also know that I’m applying knowledge I did not have a couple weeks about about how the DoD budgets.
I am also learning though that sitting and coding all day is not my forte, and that is ok. At least I know what I like/don’t like.

On Saturday, my knitting friend and I made our way out to George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
I had been there a couple times during winters but never summer and she had never been there at all. Never have I been to a more peaceful and beautiful place. Mount Vernon is truly magical and restful for the soul.
It is so awesome to see how clever and considerate Washington was with all he did. A family favorite that I got to see again were the “ha-ha walls” which were walls made to keep livestock out of the line of sight, but to not obstruct the line of sight with walls or fences either. It it really inspirational to see how innovative he was and how he found simple solutions instead of using solutions that were already established but clunky.
It was also so humid and so hot that despite all the water I drank, I still ended up with a dehydration headache.
The headache from being outside and in the sun on Saturday persisted through Sunday morning, but I pushed through and wrote a talk for church at the last minute, as God intended.
The talk went well! I was surprised with how well it went actually!
I spent Sunday afternoon prepping for next week by doing meal prep, laundry, napping and such
:)
It was a chill week, but very much so needed.

Much love,
Sunny

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Entry 9 (July 21-27) NASA Goddard!!!
Here’s some epic clickbait for you: I went to NASA Goddard this week!
On Monday, my church group hosted a little low stakes spelling bee. I didn’t think that a bunch of young adults could get so invested in a spelling bee, but it got pretty serious really fast, it was
also seriously fun! I unfortunately did not win. The law students excelled there, but I thought it was a very clever activity. I highly recommend doing a spelling bee for a group activity for grown ups. It’s what everyone secretly wants but is too afraid to admit.
On Tuesday, the metro - from what I heard - caught fire and it was super late.
I watched the platform fill up with interns. It was kind of mind blowing to be in a sea of young adults from all over the world who all came to DC to be an intern in all different sorts of offices that literally make America run.
With that though, there were lots of Hill-terns (interns who work on The Hill) and I watched them lose their minds over how mad their bosses were going to be about them being late.
I am super glad to be working in CAPE where everyone is very relaxed about exact times of clocking in/out and they are not harsh on their interns at all.
It was still a very uniting feeling I felt though on the platform with all the interns - despite the craziness of running late. We really are a quickly rising generation of young professionals, and it’s cool to see that outside of conferences or social media.

On Pioneer Day (or to the non-Utah world July 24th) us CAPE interns got to tour NASA
Goddard??
What?
Sunny! In her natural habitat at NASA!
Yes, you best believe!
I had never been to the Goddard facility - despite having lots of contacts there - so it was all new and so exciting!
We had just missed the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope by a week, but we got to see parts of it!
Throughout this internship I didn’t realize how much I have learned in my astronomy research lab back in Utah, but it seems the skills are applicable in lots of fields! (thank goodness)

The best moment of using my astro research knowledge was understanding the Roman telescope and knowing enough to be super excited about the impact it’ll make because it’s range for surveys is so much larger than any other telescope, and understanding how clever the arrangement of the picture-takers are for maximum picture taking.
We got to walk into the centrifuge chambers which was mind blowing how large scale the physics of those centrifuges are. We also walked into the noise test chamber. My elective on audio/visual physics finally came into clutch as I told the other interns fun facts about the physics of noise and frequencies since there was a horn the size of a small apartment coming through the wall.
We also walked through a bunch of the machinery shops. I was super impressed with how similar the shops looked to my automechanics shop from high school. I’ve always missed auto, so seeing the spirit of those shops is happening at NASA was really exciting to me! I will say though that the NASA shops were much cleaner in terms of grime and language though :)
At the end of the tour, my mentor from my research lab in Utah got to visit with me for a second!
She graduated and just started a post-doc at Goddard, so it was super serendipitous for us to be in the same place at the same time, but I mean two astronomers being at NASA Goddard isn’t a complete coincidence :)
I loved getting to tour Goddard! I loved the vibe and it made me miss academia (briefly though because I’m not ready to go back to school yet haha). I also loved it because I was impressed by myself! There were a couple different times they were talking about ‘Lagrange this’, ‘CCD’s that’ and I actually understood the physics they were talking about!
I don’t know when I acquired such advanced knowledge of physics and astronomy (probably when I made it as an upperclassman in physics & astronomy) but still, it soothed my own imposter syndrome.
On Sunday, I made my way through the most humidity I’ve ever experienced, to Iwo Jima at 7am. Iwo Jima is my favorite DC gem, and I hadn’t made it out there yet so I decided to take my final for my class there. Taking a final at Iwo Jima, overlooking the National Mall is honestly pretty iconic, so I really enjoyed the aesthetic of it.
I finished my work there, watched a very cute dog playing fetch, and made my way to church.

I can tell that this internship is wrapping up quicker than I’m ready for, but I can also tell that I have made the absolute most of it by putting my all into everything I’ve done this summer. So even if I don’t feel like I’m ready to leave, I know I am ready to take on this next school year and whatever path of grad school I pursue!

Much love,
Sunny

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Entry 10 (July 28 - August 2) “I Lived”

Ah, my final week and final blog.
This summer has gone by so fast and yet it has been so full of lovely things.

I started the week by getting coffee with a networking connection who works in Space Policy at the State Department. He is basically in charge of keeping the International Space Station from falling out of the sky - policy wise. He used to be a middle school science teacher, to give you an idea of the vibes. Very, very cool dude. I appreciated hearing more about his story and his path.
Work was all about organizing my code to be continued once I leave. I also worked super hard on getting results for my presentation.
Monday evening, I had an ice cream social with a church group. It was super fun, and a good time to say bye to my DC friends (the ones who weren’t coming back to Utah with me haha)
On Tuesday, I sped finished the actual presentation and got it in in the nick of time to get approved by DoD for publishing.
Apparently at work, it is a tradition to give a lego spaceship - signed by the team - to someone who is leaving the team.
Since it’s my last week, I was presented with a lovely lego space shuttle signed by my team. It even has a little Canada Arm with a tiny lego satellite! It means the world to me that they would do that for me. They said that my mentor had picked out a space shuttle for me because I’m all about connecting the world with space and that’s what the shuttle missions’ purpose was too. It was very thoughtful of them. I’m seriously going to miss my team so much!
On Tuesday evening, my astronomy mentor from Utah and her husband took me out to dinner at an amazing Thai place! She is seriously the sweetest! We’ve been working together all of my undergraduate and she taught me pretty much everything I know astro and coding wise. It was great to tell her about how much more confident my internship has made me in coding and research, especially since I’ll be going back to Utah where she’s not my mentor anymore :(
On Wednesday, SPS hosted a dress rehearsal for us to practice our presentations. Other people got feedback on what to change to make their slides better, but I had barely gotten my slides approved in time so I couldn’t go back and change them so I just made sure to practice my presentation of my set-in-stone slides.
My last week here felt a bit never ending with all the activities, but that’s a nice feeling because I didn’t want it to end.
As a final outing, some gal pals and I went to a Y2K themed concert out at the wharf. I put on my electric blue eyeliner and threw my hair in some pigtails, another girly put Avril Lavigne clip in pink streaks in her hair, and we were truly the life of the party.
We screamed all the words to the songs and danced the night away. The feeling of humid summer nights with friends, getting ice cream, dressing up, and getting ice cream really completed the summer vibes for me. Even though I’m sad to be leaving soon, it’s kind of like the One Republic song “I Lived”: I really have made the absolute most of the summer at work, socially, and while prioritizing rest so that I can have the energy to say “yes” to opportunities I
wanted to take. This is such growth for me and really fills my heart knowing that:
“I, I did it all
I owned every second that this world could give
I saw so many places
The things that I did
Yeah, with every broken bone
I swear I lived”
Except - thank goodness - I didn’t break any bones this summer! Which is a huge improvement from other summers :)
To round out the night, I hung out with my little group of SPS interns and we practiced our presentations since we were all pretty nervous. We quickly descended into madness since we were all pretty tired, but that just added to the end of summer nostalgia vibes.
Remember how I said a couple days ago the metro caught fire? Well it did it again, but much worse, and it was right during peak commute time. This was also right when all the SPS interns were supposed to make it downtown for the final presentations on Thursday. I was already running late, but it turned out to be a good thing because right as I was going down the metro escalator, I passed two SPS interns who were on their way back up from waiting for a metro that wasn’t coming. At the metro entrance was lots of new reporters - which I’m sure I photobombed at least five of. Us three interns got an uber and made it to our final presentations in plenty of time! I’m very grateful for the serendipity there.

For my final presentation, my astronomy mentor got time off from Goddard and came to support me. No one from my team at work was able to make it, but one of my cubicle buddies made sure I still had a CAPEster come to my presentation. It meant so much to me that both of them came out to support me.
All the interns did SUCH A GOOD JOB at presenting!!! The whole thing ran so fabulously!! I was super impressed and glad to be part of such an awesome cohort!
When it came time for my presentation, I ended up doing so much better than I had anticipated!
I didn’t have much time to put together the slides, get them approved by DoD, and then practice so I was expecting to rely on my improv skills. But when it came time, I just focused on explaining my research like I would to my two supporters in the audience. I pretended like I was just talking to them, instead of standing in front of a room full of people and being recorded.
Pretending like I was just explaining research to them made me feel so much better and half way through presenting I realized I was doing so much better than I thought was possible!
I spend Friday tying up loose ends, giving thank you cards, and doing final meetings.
Mostly though, I spend Friday holding back tears because I’ve really loved my time at The Pentagon. It’s been so lovely and because that, it is so hard to say goodbye.
On my way in on Friday though, I was on the metro and a 3 Star British Space Force General got on the train right in front of me. Spooked as I was, I tried to keep my cool. I made sure to walk nearish until I knew we were going the same way, and figured to be extra brave on my last day and introduce myself. We ended up having a nice chat - when I wasn’t fan girling too hard. He was very gracious. I wanted to tell him I worked with Space Force Gaurdians but didn’t want to associate my word fumbling with them in case it reflected badly.
Some goodbyes were tough because the relationships I had built mean a lot to me and a thank you card didn’t fully cover how much it meant to me when they had welcomed me as a very scared intern, built my confidence, helped me feel comfortable and like I really was a part of an awesome team, in just the course of 10 weeks.
When it finally was time for me to be walked out - because you have to be escorted out on your last day - my escort team looked more like a team of bouncers: 5 men, 1 of which in military uniform. We went down the escalators and past the “Welcome to the Pentagon” words on the wall and military branch flags, for my last time (this summer). I don’t know about them, but I was tearing up. I had been all day long. I’ve never been much of a crier at graduations or saying goodbyes, but this one was tough because it all meant so much to me. I grew so much this summer and felt so fulfilled and so cool working in OSD CAPE in the Pentagon!!
Luckily, one of the Guardians - whose spirit animal is a golden retriever - started joking, jumping up and down, telling me that on my way out I should make sure to take a selfie and make sure to take my Pentagon ID’s with me (which is for sure not allowed) because I “can outrun the guards.” To “really just go for it! Run! You can totally outrun them!” I was looked at the security guard and he didn’t think I could outrun him...but he was surprised to see such a big group escorting me out. I really was getting the royal treatment. He said that it feels like a “clap out moment.” So they all started clapping as I walked out, and I sang the first couple notes of the Rocky theme because it felt very...Rocky and victorious?...to me haha
They were all so sweet and as you can see, very entertaining to be around.
I walked the escort out-path as they clapped and I did Rocky fist pumps. As I walked out the doors for my final time (this summer) I turned around to wave, the group was getting on the up escalator and had turned around to wave too.
It was a very tender moment that was perfect to wrap up the internship.
After walking out with my signed lego shuttle space ship in hand, I made sure to say bye to the outside security guards. I had told them earlier that it was my last day. As I said bye, they made sure to remind me that the Pentagon will still be here, when I’m ready :)
I told them, “yes it will, especially if you have anything to say about it!”
When I got home, it was packing frantically time - until SPS interns Saniya, James, and JJ came to the apartment to have a final hang before we part ways. We laughed, we reminisced, we ended up sitting on the floor in a circle chattering about life at 2am. It was another perfect wrap to the summer.
Until I got up and still had packing to do.
I made it to the airport on an hour of sleep, carrying many bags. Despite that, traveling went very smoothly.
I landed in the Las Vegas airport and was immediately greeted by slot machines, cigarette smoke, 0% humidity, blue mountains, the sight of dirt, and knew I was home after a successful internship!

Much love,
Sunny