Mikayla Cleaver, 2018 AIP/ Society of Rheology History

Biography

SPS Chapter: Gettysburg College

I am a rising senior physics major with a studio art minor at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In past summers I have performed research in astrophysics at both Gettysburg College as an XSIG research fellow and at Texas A&M University through the NSF REU program. At Gettysburg, I used Python to analyze simulation data of galaxy cluster mergers to calculate velocity dispersion. When I was at Texas A&M, I studied the spectra of galaxies to determine stellar kinematics to help perform the calculation that determines the mass of black holes located at the center of that galaxy.

In the future, I would like to work in public outreach to help educate the public on scientific topics. On campus, I work as a lead mentor for the LEGO After School Activities Program for fourth through sixth grade girls where we get young girls involved and excited about science through LEGO robotics. I am also involved in our chapter of Society of Physics Students, where I have just been elected co-president, and am on the executive board for STEMinists, a group that supports and advocates for women in STEM fields while educating the public about women in STEM.

Internship

Host: The Society of Rheology

Project

Abstract

The year 2029 will be the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the Society of Rheology. In preparation for the centenary, I have been compiling precise and engaging biographies of past Bingham Medal winners to be uploaded to the Society of Rheology webpage, as well as to the Physics History Network on the American Institute of Physics (AIP) website. I have also been promoting higher engagement with the members of the Society through the use of social media via the Niels Bohr Library and Archives (NBLA) Facebook and Twitter. Studying the history of science allows us to learn about the great men and women in science and their accomplishments that moved the scientific community forward. This project will help preserve the history of the Society of Rheology for future generations of members.

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Week One: The Old and the New

As my first week of this internship draws to a close, I am very excited to see where this summer takes me. I have learned a lot within the first few days of my internship and I am sure I will learn a lot more. Let’s talk about the old first: I am the AIP/Society of Rheology History intern and when first offered the position, I had never even heard of rheology, which in short is the branch of physics that deals with the deformation and flow of matter. This was slightly terrifying, but the description of the position was so interesting that I was also very excited to try something new. The position focuses on researching the history of physics, specifically rheology in this case, where I had only previously researched in hard science. I will be looking at the previous winners of the Bingham Medal, an award given out by the Society of Rheology, and writing up bios about them. Though this is completely different than anything I have done previously, I was excited to learn and utilize different skills you wouldn’t normally learn in a physics class.

Between all the orientation lessons this week, I have actually started to research some of these medalists. The award was first presented in 1948 and has been given out every year since. I have begun to utilize the materials available to me in the Niels Bohr Library and Archives (NBLA) through online searches of the library and archives, as well as digging deep on the internet to find information. The archives here have so many boxes about anything physics you could imagine! While the Society of Rheology is a smaller one, the archives still contain a good amount of information about them, from pamphlets to bulletins to an actual casting mold of the Bingham medal. I have also been using oral histories that discuss the medalists from other physicists’ points of view to gather more information- all of which is online and in a transcript, which make them super easy to use! From these oral histories I have learned some fun facts about some of the medalists you wouldn’t normally find and the best one so far is definitely that the first winner, Melvin Mooney, actually LOST the medal the same night it was given to him and the society had to have another recast for him! All in all, I’m proud of the work I’ve been able to accomplish in a short amount of time.

Now for the new: This is my first time ever living in a city. My hometown is Collegeville, Pennsylvania, which is a suburb of Philly and I attend Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania which is very rural. It is an entirely new experience living with the sounds, sights, and people of D.C.! It was definitely an adjustment to sleeping in the city. Funnily enough, it wasn’t the sounds that bothered me- it was the lights! Even with the blinds pulled, a dull, orange glow comes through the windows in the dorm we are staying in. Luckily, I’ve been tired enough every night because of how busy we are that it doesn’t bother me too much. I’ve also made a lot of new friends already! The group of interns here are honestly some of the friendliest and most outgoing people I have met. I already feel pretty close with my roommates Amanda and Kristen, as well as our roommate Jillian who is not in the SPS internship, but is doing an internship on policy also in D.C. The first Monday after orientation, we all went to Stephanie, Sarah, Sam, and Daniel’s room, where it was kind of a potluck meal and enjoyed a nice group dinner together! It was a fun time to reflect on our orientation day and get ready for our first real day of work on Tuesday.

I am excited to see where this summer takes me, both through the old and the new. There is so much I want to experience in D.C., probably more than our ten weeks’ worth. I look forward to working on my project and living in D.C. with such an amazing group of people!

Week Two: New Experiences and a Familiar Face

As I am writing this blog post, it is hard to remember all that I’ve done the past week- I should probably be keeping notes!

I guess I’ll start with some work updates. Last Friday, I had my first conference call with my mentors Amanda, Sarah, and Gareth. Amanda and Sarah, as well as my other mentor Melanie, work here at AIP in the Niels Bohr Library and Archives are the “history half” of my mentorship. Gareth works at MIT as a professor and is a member of the Society of Rheology, where he was the president for a year, so he is the “rheology half” of my mentorship. On our conference call, we took about 45 minutes to an hour to discuss the exact goals of my internship for the summer as well as evaluate how my progress was going from the first week. I have been working through the information a little faster than anticipated which is not a bad thing.

Now, I was proud of what I had accomplished so far but was a little unclear as to exactly how Gareth wanted the bios of the medalists written out. To my surprise, he seemed to really like them, as well as my writing style! I have always been slightly self-conscious in my writing ability, so his excitement for what I had achieved so far encouraged me a lot. Other than the bios, we also decided on some other goals for me to achieve this summer. I am going to work a little bit on the Society of Rheology social media as an outreach project; whenever I find an interesting piece of information, I will share it on their Facebook page or twitter page. (Linked here for Facebook and here for twitter.) I am trying to come up with a catchy hashtag for the posts- if you have any ideas, send them my way to mcleaver [at] aip.org! I was able to share my first post on their Facebook page this week, which was very exciting! Another goal for me is to eventually upload any of the winners of the Bingham Medal that were physicists into the Physics History Network , which give short descriptions and bios about different physicists. Hopefully the bios I am writing will end up not only on there, but on the Society of Rheology’s new website that is being worked on right now!

I have also done a lot of fun stuff outside of work this week, along with the other interns. Last Friday night, we all got together to play a bunch of games and hang out to get to know each other better! I brought A LOT of games, so it’s really nice that everyone wants to play them every once in a while. On Saturday, a majority of the interns headed to OSA, where Brigette works, for the Pride parade and a party they were hosting for it. I did all of the boys’ makeup with rainbow eyeshadow and glitter. It was really nice of OSA to host all of us- they had a lot of good food (which is great for a broke college student) and fun leis for all of us to wear. The actual parade was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. We had a perfect viewing location and the rain held out all day for us, which is nice because it was supposed to thunderstorm all afternoon. The next morning, a couple of us went out to brunch at Teaism, which had amazing food and drinks. I got a ginger limeade which was awesome!

This week has also been packed full of a lot of fun things. I was surprised earlier this week when one of my physics professors, Dr. Crawford, from Gettysburg showed up out of nowhere! He was here for a meeting that I did not know about and Brad brought him up to my workplace to say hi and show him around. It really brightened my week to see such a familiar face after a week of meeting a lot of new people. On Wednesday night, a group of about nine of us interns headed out for a walk around the tidal basin at night. It was beautiful out and the monuments looked amazing lit up at night. I can’t wait to explore more of D.C., I think some of us are planning to visit a Smithsonian or two this weekend which is something I have been looking forward to for a while.

Week Three: Do It for the Blog

The title of this blog has become the catch phrase for anything we interns do as a group.

When I was trying to think of what to write about throughout the week, it seemed like I had not done a lot compared to other weeks. Boy, was I wrong. Last Friday night, a majority of us went to a free talk and debriefing about the Cassini spacecraft that went to Saturn. Now, the event online stated it was in Powell Auditorium which, unbeknownst to us, is located in the Cosmos Club. This wouldn’t have been a big deal other than we had all just changed out of our work clothes and into sweats and t-shirts. The club is normally very fancy with dresses and jackets required and while this was not the case for our event, let’s just say we still stuck out pretty badly. Despite being obvious college students, we learned a good deal about the physics and engineering behind the spacecraft and the moons of Saturn, which Amanda and I were very excited about since we are both huge astro nerds! On the way home, Amanda and I stopped for rolled ice cream which we had never had before and had nice conversations over the dessert and the walk home. (I really lucked out having her as my roommate!)

That Saturday, I actually headed home (well, to meet my family in Delaware not my home town) for my cousin’s graduation party! It was very nice to see my mom, sister, aunts, uncles, grandma, and cousins. We had a lot of fun talking and catching up, as well as playing some cornhole! My team was winning 16-4 at one point but ended up losing. I headed back to DC that same night, where Sam, Daniel, and Phoebe met me at Union Station because it was late at night. I really appreciated them coming to pick me up because my mom didn’t want me travelling back to the dorm by myself (and frankly, neither did I) in the dark. The next day, we had an intern brunch and movie day. A bunch of people made breakfast foods from eggs to pancakes to potatoes and then we headed off to see the movie of the summer: Incredibles 2. And let me tell you- it was amazing! I am a HUGE Disney nerd and pretty much love any movie they put out, but this movie was special. There was a lot of female empowerment that I really appreciated! Definitely go see it if you have the chance.

And that was just the weekend! This week at work I learned some valuable information- how to upload to the Niels Bohr Library and Archives (NBLA) Facebook and Twitter, as well as how to upload information about physicists into the database to be published on the Physics History Network. The sites for social media outreach used by NBLA are super cool- there’s one to design posts to look pretty with quotes and pictures and one that you can schedule posts with, as well as see the analytics of your post! This tells you how many people your post reached, the likes, etc. Learning the database was a little difficult- there’s a lot of steps to inputting the information. Once you have your research done and uploaded into the database, you have to go through all the places and people you mentioned and add the person you were researching to all the people and places on their database! It’s pretty time consuming, but I am figuring it out pretty quickly.

Lastly, there was some fun stuff that happened through AIP and SPS this week. On Wednesday, all the interns got to attend the AIP all staff meeting. It was interesting to hear some of the inner workings of AIP from Michael Moloney, who is the CEO of AIP. And of course, all the interns had to introduce themselves to the group and share our favorite color (thanks, Brad). What was really awesome about the meeting (other than the post-meeting free barbecue food) was that part of it was to celebrate Pride! All the staff wore different clothes that were bright colors of the rainbow, which we then lined up in the order of the rainbow for a group picture. There are also plans throughout the year for AIP to incorporate more activities that promote diversity, which is amazing. Last night, on Thursday, SPS took the interns and the executive committee out on an Odyssey boat cruise for dinner and dancing. The boat goes up and down the Potomac River, right past the monuments and pretty close to where we live in Foggy Bottom. The views were amazing, especially when it got dark and the city lit up. And the food was DELICIOUS! I really enjoyed the night hanging out with my new friends and getting to know the executive committee of SPS a little bit. It was a nice way to spend the night and of course I got some good pictures for Instagram out of it!

Also: Happy birthday shout out to both Stephanie and Michael! Both their birthdays were this week!

Week Four: Staying in the Moment

“If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don’t like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.” -Sean O’Connell, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

There’s been a lot of moments I’ve wanted to stay in the past four weeks, but some of the best have happened this week. Before the boat cruise last week, I got a text from my boyfriend Peter asking if he could call me which, to be honest, scared me. But to my surprise, he was calling to let me know I would be seeing him in less than 24 hours because he was coming down to DC to surprise me for the weekend! To say I was ecstatic is probably an understatement. I got to see my family the weekend before and now I get to spend the weekend with one of my favorite people? It was unreal!

I quickly had to plan for his visit- text the roommate group chat to make sure it was okay if he could stay, figure out what would be open to do that weekend, and make sure he was okay with helping with our outreach event on the weekend. Luckily, everything worked out and we had an awesome weekend! I picked him up from Union Station Friday night and Peter got to meet all of my new friends and they all got along really well. (There’s a moment I would like to stay in.) That Saturday, Peter and I spent the day at the Natural History Museum- specifically the geology room because that’s my favorite (another moment I’d like to stay in). We arrived back at the dorms in the late afternoon where I and the other interns met Brad and Danielle to head over to the School Without Walls to hold the Astronomy on the Mall event (which turned into astronomy in the cafeteria because it was moved inside due to weather). Peter stopped by to help for the last hour after grabbing dinner with one of his sisters who lives here in DC. He helped me run the astronomy trivia section, which had some pretty cool questions! (Did you know there are more trees on earth than stars in the galaxy?)

The next day, we all headed to brunch at Kramerbooks & Afterwords Café with Danielle! It was a really cute place that is part café part bookstore. And it had some of the best crab cakes I have ever had. It was a really fun morning/afternoon spent getting to know the other interns and Danielle even more. (Again, a moment I wouldn’t mind staying in for a while.) Peter and I walked back to the dorm after that, stopping at Captain Cookie on the way- which has the best ice cream cookie sandwiches ever. That night, Peter went home to New York and I made my way back to the dorms to get ready for the week.

During the week, all the interns went to dinner with James, Brad, and Michael Moloney at the Sette Osteria. This place had some pretty good Italian food and we had some good conversations! Michael is very friendly and easy to talk to (which is good because of course I was at first slightly intimidated by him being the CEO!) and at one point, everyone was sharing baby pictures of themselves around the table! (Oh look, another moment I’d like to stay in.) During work this week, I worked more on my bios and uploading information into the PHN database while posting social media throughout the week. I am getting into a rhythm of how to get my work done in the best possible way. On Thursday, I met the current president of the Society of Rheology, Norm, and had lunch with him, my mentors, and Liz. He was really nice and was very happy with what I’m doing for the society. It really boosts my confidence that the people I’m working for think I am doing quality work.

Us interns also watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty this week, which is obviously where the quote is from at the beginning of this blog. When Amanda said she had it, everyone jumped on the chance to watch it. I think it really speaks to all of us this summer where we are all on this big adventure of an internship, not really sure where we are going, but having fun and making friends while doing it!

Week Five: The Fourth

Hello again internet!

It’s hard to believe that I am halfway through my ten weeks here at AIP/SPS. I have learned a lot about history research while I’ve been here, a completely new skill to me since I am used to hard science research. There are some similarities- both heavily involve computers! While the science research I have done focuses more on coding on a computer, the history research involved a lot of looking up resources available, reading old digitized articles online, and writing up the information. What is nice with history research is that there is also a lot of hands on researching I can do! This past week I have been heavily looking through our archives on the Society of Rheology which includes documents such as the original constitution (which was written on a hotel notepad, by the way), correspondence between executive committee members, and old prints of the Rheology Bulletin. It’s nice to have a break from looking at computer screens all day and be able to look into the past through the archives.

The past week has, of course, been packed full of fun things! Brigette’s birthday was last Friday so the interns all got together and had a party for her that night. The next day a couple of us went out for Danielle’s birthday, meeting her around U Street for a night on the town! It was a weekend packed full of birthday celebrations. On Sunday, Amanda was her usual awesome self and woke up at 6:30 AM to reserve 8 tickets to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. (She then also went back to sleep, of course.) Our tickets were for 1:30 and we all ended dup staying until 4:30-5, if not later. There is so much more in that museum that you can see from the outside! There are actually around three floors below ground level which takes you through a timeline of African American history, starting at slavery and working its way through modern day as you move up the floor levels. The upper levels have different exhibits from music to food to television. My personal favorite was the Broadway exhibit which had original costumes from The Wiz!

On Monday, SPS threw a picnic for all the interns and their mentors at ACP. We had barbecue and played a lot of games! What was super awesome was that the creators of Looney Labs were there and played a bunch of their games with us (some not even released yet!). Andy and Kristin Looney brought a bunch of their games, like Zendo and Fluxx, to play with us. It was really cool to meet them, especially for me, because as most of my friends know I will never turn down the opportunity to play games, specifically card games like Fluxx. At the end of the night, they gave the interns a copy of Zendo for the dorm and Andy signed personalized Fluxx cards for us!

And of course, I need to write about the Fourth of July here in the nation’s capital. During the day, most of the interns met Brad for lunch at Elephant & Castle, which is an English pub. Kind of ironic for the Fourth of July, but good nonetheless. That evening we left around 4:30 to grab seats for the concert and fireworks later that night. We ended up getting some really good seats in the grass right in front of the Capitol building! We could see the stage and jumbotrons for the concert and the Washington Monument where the fireworks would be. The actual event started at 8 so it was a long and VERY hot wait for the show. But it was so worth it! John Stamos hosted the event (which was so exciting after growing up on Full House reruns) and we got to hear a lot of artists play. The fireworks were amazing and set to a live orchestra. I can honestly say I’ve never had a Fourth of July experience like this before.

I will continue to keep you all updated through the last half of this internship!

Week Six: I’m Going to Steal the Declaration of Independence

Last weekend was amazing- Peter came to visit me again! On Friday, we stayed in because it was slightly rainy here in DC. We watched the World Cup game and then cooked dinner together (one of our favorite things to do). On Saturday, we went to the zoo! It was Peter’s only requirement of visiting me this summer and probably one of the most fun things I’ve done so far. The zoo is just big enough that it has a lot to see, but small enough that you don’t need to spend the whole day there. We were able to see otters (Sam’s favorite), reptiles, elephants, and the pandas! ( I mean, come on, that ‘s the real draw of the DC Zoo.) They were so cute and so lazy. That night we stayed in and chilled, watching movies and Netflix. On Sunday, Peter and I went to lunch with our friend from Gettysburg, Rikard, who was in DC visiting another friend from his hometown. We had some delicious chicken sandwiches that had doughnuts as the bun! I then sadly had to sad goodbye that afternoon, as Peter was off to a job interview in Frederick and then home.

This week at work was interesting- I only came in every other day. On Tuesday and Thursday, we had tours and workshops at the Optical Society of America (OSA) and Capitol Hill. At OSA, we started out with a workshop on professional development from Danielle. It was very helpful, especially since I will be applying for jobs within the next year. We specifically talked about CV’s and resumes, the differences, and how to craft successful ones. Danielle showed us her resume that got her the job she has now at SPS and even color-coded it in correspondence with the job ad to show how important it is to use the correct language and emphasize the right points within the resume you hand in. We then worked off of actual job postings she printed out to create a resume for practice. I have to say it will definitely help me in the future because I have never had such an in-depth opportunity to learn about these things. After the workshop, we had the chance to meet the CEO of OSA and tell her about our summer. Brigette then showed us all around her building (which is super fancy and nice by the way!) and we made our way to the top floor for pizza! OSA has a beautiful balcony overlooking DC that we ate on and had some nice conversations with everyone.

On Thursday, we went on a tour of Capitol Hill with Sarah and Sam as our tour guides. Sam had a very specific timetable for us to follow, which I loved because I like knowing what and when we are going to do things. We promptly met at his and Sarah’s room at 8:15 AM to make our way to the metro station and to Sarah’s office in the Ford building first- the Minority Office for The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. She showed us around her office and introduced us to a couple of people that work there. After that, we made our way to another building where we would be sitting in on a hearing about artificial intelligence (AI) held by the committee. The hearing was probably my favorite part of the day, as the distinguished witnesses were so knowledgeable in the topic and could answer any question asked by the congressmen and women with ease. During the hearing we all snuck out the back to go and meet Dr. Bill Foster, a representative from the state of Illinois who holds a PhD in physics! He was so nice and we all had the chance to introduce ourselves. He made sure to specifically have a small interaction with each of us about how important the work we are doing is. (He was also wearing a periodic table tie which was awesome.)

After the hearing, we headed to lunch where I had the chance to sit down and eat with a AAAS Fellow that works in Sarah’s office. She was very easy to talk to and had some great insights for me. I am very interested in outreach and policy, which she also was, and she was able to give me some tips for the future. After lunch, we made our way over to the Hart building where Senator Duckworth’s office is and where Sam works. We weren’t able to see his office because we did not want to bother the Senator as she was doing work, but we did get to see Senator Bernie Sanders’ office! Even though we didn’t get to meet him, seeing where he works was amazing. We then had the opportunity to take the underground shuttles from Hart to the Capitol Building where we were able to be a little more “touristy”. While there, we watched a movie about the Capitol, toured the building with Sam as our amazing tour guide, and even sat in on a Senate meeting where a senator from Ohio was discussing Trump’s Supreme Court nomination and national parks funding. When we were finished, we decided to head home even though we all really wanted to go to the Library of Congress because of how exhausted we were from walking around all day.

That night when we got back, after nursing my bleeding ankles from walking around in flats all day, I had the urge to watch National Treasure because, come on, we had just toured the Capitol! Some of the interns had never seen it (how????!!) and we all thoroughly enjoyed the ridiculousness, but awesomeness, of Nicolas Cage stealing the Declaration of Independence.

Week Seven: In The Home Stretch

It’s hard to believe that there’s only three weeks left here in DC. My major accomplishement this week has been hitting 11,111 words on my biogrpahy document!

While this has probably been my most relaxing week thus far, I still did a decent amount of stuff. Last weekend, I went to my second Jazz in the Garden with Amanda and her friend, Ryan, who was visiting this weekend. There we walked around the sculpture garden, drank some yummy sangria, and listened to some funky jazz music. When I got back to my room that night, I hung with Elon, her boyfriend, and Daniel for a round of Egyptian Ratscrew (ERS). Now, if you’ve ever played ERS, you know it can get... intense. It ended up being a back and forth between Daniel and me for about an hour. Daniel eventually won, but I still say it’s because I was getting extremely tired! The next day, I met MY friend Ryan (who knew both Amanda and I would have Ryan’s in on the same weekend?!) for lunch at Burger, Tap, and Shake. It was nice to see someone from Gettysburg about halfway through my summer break. Ryan is also my SPS Co-President, so we were able to talk a little bit about what we wanted to do with the chapter next year.

Sunday was a very chill day that involved sleeping in pretty late, a great meal, and relaxing at night. Around 1, a group of about 8 of us headed to get Ethiopian food near the Mt. Vernon Convention Center. It was amazing! The food came out on two large platters for all of us to share family style and you eat it with your hands- pick up some bread, pick up some meat, and eat! Everything was very good. Afterward, we stopped at a fancy gelati place to grab some ice cream before heading home and relaxing the rest of the night.

During work this week, I have been not only working on my biographies and social media outreach, I have been preparing for our presentations at the end of the summer. It is coming up sooner that I realize, and I want to be ready for it. This also involves creating a poster for the Society of Rheology which the creative team is helping me on. I have information and pictures that I will provide to them and they’re going to help me create an eye-catching and fun poster! By preparing for this, I am also preparing for my presentation because the same information needs to be on both. I also met with James this week for a mid-summer intern check in. I was able to give him some feedback I hope was helpful and he was able to ease some of the concerns I was feeling about the last couple weeks of work.

On Wednesday, my friend Hallie, who works for the FDA here in College Park this summer, picked me up from work and we grabbed dinner together before heading to a Gettysburg College Sendoff. These sendoffs are a tradition at Gettysburg, where alumni, current students, and incoming first-years gather to meet and mingle before school starts back up at the end of the summer. It’s a great way to welcome in new students before the beginning of the school year. This was the first time I have been to one and I will definitely be going to more! I had an amazing time hanging out with Hallie and other people I knew from Gettysburg as well as answering questions the incoming first-years had. (I also made some connections with alumni that will hopefully pay off later!)

Tonight, I’m headed to see Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again with Kristen, Amanda, and Kristen’s cousin for Kristen’s birthday! I am very excited because I’ve heard it’s really good and, come on, can you really go wrong with ABBA? Tomorrow, my friend Trish is coming down for the weekend and I’m excited to spend some time with her as I think I haven’t seen her since winter break! I will keep you updated (well, three more times) about my summer here as it comes to a close.

Week Eight: NIST, NASA, and No-Hitters

Two weeks left- what the heck!

On Saturday, one of my best friends from school, Trish, came to visit me! Of course, it was downpouring most of the weekend, so we were stuck inside. We passed the time with games and videos, venturing out only for lunch and dinner. Eventually we also ventured outside around 10 at night to go out and have some fun. It stopped raining about halfway through our night and we also had some pretty good food at the Diner (coffee cookies and cream milkshakes and breakfast). The next day Trish had to leave, and I had a relaxing rest of the day.

After coming home from work on Monday, I tried to get on to my computer, but it wasn’t connecting to the internet for some reason. After trying to figure it out myself, I left it until the next day to see if it was just the internet connection (spoiler: it wasn’t). The next night, I spent hours trying to figure it out myself (shout out to Kristen and Elon for trying to help me out). I also spent a couple hours on the phone with HP IT trying to get help (they didn’t help either). I eventually brought my computer in Wednesday to the GWU IT department and they were able to fix it! Apparently, my computer had contracted a virus and GW’s wifi will kick you out of any of their connections. Luckily, it was a relatively easy fix and my computer now works!

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we had our tours at NIST and NASA. Jesus, Collin, and Daniel all did awesome jobs planning their tours! Also, I thought my commute was bad at around 45mins, but their commutes are over an hour each way which is intense. At NIST, we toured some labs including Jesus’, the Nanofab lab, and their museum. The museum was so cool because it really captures a lot of scientific invention history. (Also, the food at NIST is really good, would recommend.) On Wednesday, we headed to NASA which is something I’ve been really excited for all summer. Astronomy and astrophysics are my first loves science-wise, so I was excited to learn about anything and everything there. We went to their Science Jamboree which had amazing free swag, awesome booths from most places on the Goddard campus, and interesting demos ranging from liquid nitrogen to VR. We also got to tour both Daniel and Collin’s labs- both of their mentors are really nice and very passionate about what they do. We also got to see the SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) lab, which holds an exact replica of the instrumentation on the Curiosity rover. This is so that they can test their experiments before attempting them on Mars which helps prevent problems occurring somewhere where they can’t control it. Afterwards, of course, we went to the gift shop to buy some cool NASA gear.

On Thursday night, I had one of the best experiences of the summer! Sarah, who works on Capitol Hill, was able to invite three people to come with her to a scavenger hunt in the Library of Congress. The scavenger hunt was baseball themed because there’s an exhibit on baseball currently there. We had to go all over the library to find new clues and do puzzles. At the end, we were entered into a drawing to win a gift basket full of books, pencils, hats, and more. I am so glad Sarah invited me to go with her! I had really been wanting to see the Library of Congress as we hadn’t had the chance to yet. I really enjoyed spending my evening with Sarah, Amanda, and Nathan after the busy weeks of tours and work.

These next two weeks are crunch time- I’ll let you know how it all pans out in my next two blogs!

Week Nine: Crunch Time

This week was the last full week of work this summer, which is crazy to me. I didn’t realize that this summer would go so fast. What’s been nice is the proximity to home- I am able to see friends and family, whether they come to visit me, or I go to visit them. It’s helped keep the homesickness at bay! Last Saturday was exactly that, as I got to see my little, Sammi, and spend the day with her and her family. We went to a cute little pick-your-own farm to look through the shop and then to a special day at the outlets where there were fun free treats and giveaways. We ended the day with some liquid nitrogen ice cream!

This week has really been crunch time on finishing up my work. As of today, I am on the 1988 Bingham Medal winner’s biography, Dr. William Schowalter. He is a chemical engineer who worked at both Princeton and the University of Illinois. Completing this biography takes me up to 97 pages, or 16,637 words, worth of writing. This is the most I have ever written in my life! It’s amazing how I’ve gone from practically fearing writing projects to being able to crank out a biography, timeline, and sources at about 1-2 biographies per day. At the beginning of this week, I also was able to collect headshots from the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives for use on the Society of Rheology webpage. Audrey Lengel, the photo archivist here at NBLA, was super helpful in helping me understand copyright issues we may need to address and then she was also able to resize the headshots into thumbnails for use on the SOR website. I now have a folder of about 40 biographies of past Bingham Medal winners that are ready to be edited and put up on their website!

This week I have also been working on my final presentation. On Monday, our abstracts were due to James, so he can start to compile everything and get it ready for our last day here. Our presentations are due to him on Monday so that he and Danielle can look over our slides and suggest changes in time to change them before practice presentations on Thursday. Kristen and I are also presenting to Amanda and Sarah on Monday to get a practice-practice presentation in before we turn our slides into James.

I think this last week has been the worst homesickness-wise. My family is all at the beach this week which is our yearly family vacation with my immediate family, cousins, aunts, uncles, and my Nana. But I was helped a little bit on Monday by a Skype call with them! Every year since we were little, we did a treasure chest scavenger hunt and the treasure chest would be filled with fun little toys, makeup, candy, etc. As we got older, the older cousins (I’m one of the oldest) would start to help hide the chest for the younger ones and even make maps for it! This year, it was a little different. Each of us (there are 5) had a scramble puzzle to figure out. We started out youngest and moved to oldest, so I was last. Obviously, I couldn’t be given pieces of a puzzle to work on since I was in DC- but my mom mailed me an Amazon package and on the receipt was a word puzzle for me! Each puzzle had to do with travel and a family vacation- and we’re going to Disney World! Anyone who knows me knows that Disney is my favorite place and I could not be happier. It definitely is helping me push through these last few weeks!

Week Ten: It Comes to a Close

Me on the Tuesday after getting home from DC at 10PM at night talking to my boyfriend: “I NEED TO DO MY BLOG!” The first three days of the week went quickly with me finishing up anything I had left to do- collecting pictures of better quality of Bingham Medal winners, finishing up any edits Gareth sent me, and hitting 100 PAGES on my biography document (which is around 17,000 words, if you were wondering.) Thursday and Friday, when I would normally do my blog, were a whirlwind with practicing our presentations and writing thank you notes all day to actually presenting our final talks to a room of 50+ people. The nights of the week were filled with practicing my talk to Kristen and Amanda, trying to pack all of my clothes and supplies back up, and squeezing in final hours with my new friends who I became incredibly close with the past 10 weeks.

I was a little nervous to present in front of 50+ people (including potentially 2 Nobel laureates), but it helped to have my new close group of friends there, as well as my mentors and the SPS staff who I had become very close with over the summer. All of us interns filmed each others presentations to show our parents. I didn’t hear anything bad from anyone at the symposium- we all had done amazing jobs. Lunch was provided after and I finally got to meet my mentor, Gareth, in person. We had only talked over the phone previously! It was nice to sit and reflect about my work that summer over lunch with all of my mentors.

That Friday night, however, was a mixture of emotions. After leaving ACP for the final time in the summer of 2018, Sarah took me and a couple of other interns to ice cream at the UMD Creamery which was awesome. After getting home, I finished packing all of my stuff up and relaxed for a little bit. Later that night a group of the interns hung out for the last time and made one last walk to the monuments at night. It was amazing to sit on the steps in front of the Lincoln Memorial with a group of people I had met only ten weeks prior- and who had become some of my best friends. It seemed fitting to end our night in front of the Washington Monument- one of the most iconic locations in DC

I would like to thank SPS, my mentors (whether in the same building or in Massachusetts), the NLBA staff, and my fellow interns for making this summer so memorable. I will not easily forget my summer in DC!