Sariah Mevs Phipps, 2019 The Optical Society Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: Brigham Young University-Idaho

My name is Sariah Mevs Phipps and I am currently entering my junior year at Brigham Young University-Idaho. I am studying physics with an emphasis in astronomy and am one of the planetarium workers at the university. My hobbies include crocheting, cooking, watching Netflix, and mainly doing physics homework.

I have loved learning about space ever since my first field trip to the planetarium, but my love for physics really began to blossom when I took a physics class my junior year of high school. I love learning about the intricate mechanics that go into the formation of the universe and am excited to continue my studies in graduate school. My current goal is to become a research professor and do research on black holes or dark matter.

Internship

Host: The Optical Society

Project

Abstract

For over one hundred years, The Optical Society has worked to promote the generation, dissemination, and application of knowledge in optics and photonics. OSA serves the global community through content and events that are authoritative, accessible, and archived, and through its education, advocacy and outreach programs. This summer, I have had the opportunity to work directly with the outreach team and learn about all the behind-the-scene practicalities that go into running outreach programs. During my time here, I was able to strengthen my skills in event planning, organization, proof reading, and team management through the various tasks I was assigned. These tasks included rewriting the career section and lesson plans on the Optics4Kids website, organizing travel info, meal plans, and housing for OSA’s Siegman School, proof reading and publishing OSA blog posts, and much more...

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Week 1

Coming to D.C has been an amazing journey so far! Aside from the amazing historical monuments around me, SPS has shown me nothing but kindness throughout the week. Monday was Memorial Day so we had the day off to acquaint ourselves with the other interns and see a few of the monuments. We saw the Memorial Day parade, the Lincoln memorial, and the Washington monument. My husband, Andrew, and I strayed off from the group sometime during the parade and ended up getting lost though. It was a long, tedious walk home but we were able to acquaint ourselves with the city because of it!

On Tuesday we had our orientation where we all rode the metro together and had breakfast as an organization. We took photos for the website and learned about how to be successful in our jobs. I’ve been a little nervous about this internship, but it made me feel better to know Brad (the head of SPS) had broken a $20,000 instrument on his internship. At least I know even the best make the worst mistakes! After that, I was taken to the Optical Society building where I will be working and given a brief tour. My advisor wasn’t able to come, but I still met all kinds of nice people and it left me very excited for my first day of work. Lucky for me, I have the closest work building out of all the other interns, so I was able to take a leisurely twenty-minute walk home.

The A.C wasn’t working in The Optical Society building, so I was told not to come into work until Thursday. Accordingly, my training and introduction to my advisor was pushed off until Friday. Thursday was loads of fun, though. I started the day by meeting my advisor, Madeline Karcov, and being shown around the building. Everyone there was very friendly, and I was told a little about what I’d be doing. So far it seems like I will be keeping track of the current chapters of OSA and advertising for more chapters on social media and newsletters. After that, we had a meeting on new renovations for the building and some stats. Lucky for me, that day was also the office outing, so we went to an Italian place with bowling after the meeting. We were served delicious food and I bonded with my co-workers through two games of bowling. I guess my advisor was right, this is the most fun internship. After that, we were all dismissed home.

On Friday I had my first day of working. To start the day, Maddie had me overlook some of the websites that she had updated to make sure that they made sense and weren’t missing anything. Since Maddie handles a lot of the distribution of awards and grants, I was looking at the requirements and instructions for those things. Then I was given a brief intro on how to work the computers. I got my own email and learned how to edit websites. After that, we had lunch. The lounge area is way bigger and cooler than I was expecting. Honestly, it’s probably as big as a Shenkman Hall apartment. Maddie invited me to have lunch with her group of friends and I felt very welcome. Since I still wasn’t entirely sure on what I was going to be doing, I took the opportunity to ask Maddie about the projects she would put me on. I will be put on the Optics for kids website, along with other outreach programs. On top of that, Maddie said that she would set up meetings with some of my physics-based colleagues so that I can get a better understanding on some of the paths I can take as a physics major. After lunch, we had a meeting about the new computer system and then I was given some more websites to look over. That didn’t take long, so Maddie told me I could go home and we would start my first project on Monday.

The weekend was filled with exploration and date nights! On Friday Andrew took me to Circa at Foggy Bottom and we had a the best dinner with stunning desserts! Then we went home and watched Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. On Saturday we went with my aunt to the Smithsonian and to the Air and Space Museum. We were able to see the history of aircraft as well as the types of rockets that were sent into space! I really enjoy D.C so far and can’t wait for next week!

Week 2

I know that most people spend the weekend dreading Mondays but I was ecstatic when it finally arrived! All the other interns had already begun their projects, but because of conflicts that I had mentioned in my previous blog, I was unable to start anything. That is, until Monday! I walked into the office and was escorted to my very own cubicle (at least my own on Mon, Wed, Thurs) and given my first four assignments. The first two are pretty similar, and the most fun for me. The optical society has a website called Optics4Kids that has activities kids can do from home to better understand optics. My job is to find and write instructions for new activities that kids of ages 5 and up, 10 and up, and 15 and up can do. The activities include an overview of what will be learned, a list of materials needed, steps to complete the experiment, and an explanation behind the physics of the activity. My second project has to do with the science kits that the Optical Society gives to teachers for classroom demonstrations. Like my other project, I have to find and write instructions for new experiments to be put into the kit. This project is targeted mostly towards middle-schoolers and is a little tricky since I have to find experiments with affordable materials. The next project I have is to update the registry for OSA chapters. Each chapter was asked to update their registry this year (as in who is the advisor, president, etc...) and many of them have not done so. I have to look at the info we have and use excel to sort the schools who have a complete registry from those who do not. It may not be as fun as the other projects, but I enjoy doing it when I want to take a break from the other two. My fourth project is to figure out the set up for a new website OSA is trying to put up. OSA has booklets that give all types of information on different fields of study in optics. However, people will seldom want to read through a thick booklet, so they’ve decided to transfer it onto the internet. I am supposed to look at different websites as examples and decide what I think is the best set up.

My Monday mainly consisted of switching off between the first three projects. I basically made a word document that included outlines of what experiments I wanted to do as well as links to the instructions. On Tuesday, I mainly focused on the Optics4kids website. I continued researching activities that could be used for the website and organized them by age group. It was a little tricky for me to find activities for teens, so I referenced activities I did in my beginning physics classes. For the most part, the experiments I came up with had to do with refraction, diffraction, polarization, reflection, photon motion, and lenses. The experiments weren’t really complex, but the explanations definitely got more complicated based on the age group. Writing the explanations for ages 15 and up was the most fun for me because I could get a lot more in depth on the physics. I also enjoyed myself when my advisor took me out for a welcome lunch. Maddie, along with Curtis and James, took me to get some delicious Tai food and made me feel so welcomed. I am so glad that I have such great coworkers.

I basically worked on the registry and Optics4kids website all week. Friday was my favorite day, though. It was international donut day so everyone in the office got free donuts and orange juice. They even switched the TV from the news to Fresh Prince of Bel Air so that was pretty great. I was able to finish both the Optics4Kids website and the OSA registry list on Friday, so I was pretty happy with that. After work, I had a lovely date night with my handsome husband. We went to the nearest theatre and got tickets for the dark phoenix movie. Although it was really bad and I would not recommend it to anyone, I still had fun being with Andrew. After that, we ate some watermelon and watched shows at home.

Saturday was another fun day. Andrew, Eric, Tibbs, and I all started the day by going to tonic for some tater tots. Then we made our way to the air and space museum and saw some of the exhibits we missed last week. After that, we went to the Optical Society for the pride parade. It was my first time going and definitely an experience. The streets were so crowded that I was amazed we even made it home! By the time we got back, Andrew and I were pretty pooped and had a nice night in. I made orange Julius, paprika baked chicken breasts, and yellow rice to end the night. We both ended up passing out on the couch in a pretty happy mood.

Week 3

The time has flown by so fast! I am entering the fourth week of being in DC and can’t believe I’m almost halfway done with my internship! Like always, I have had lots to do and still have so much more to explore.

This week the Optical Society hosted a conference where over 200 optical scientists, manufacturers, and engineers gathered to discuss their projects and areas of research. I had the opportunity to attend this meeting and take notes for OSA’s blog. The majority of sessions I attended talked about freeform optics, which is a topic I had never heard of until then. After about two sessions of barely understanding what was going on, I decided to take a break and do some research on the topic. I knew I wouldn’t be able to completely understand it, but if I at least knew the basic concept, I could take better notes. Although it did help some, I’m thankful that I didn’t have to write a blog on that day’s sessions.

On Tuesday I attended yet another session, but this one was much easier to understand. It was a Q and A for a panel discussing the future of additive manufacturing in optical devices. Put in simpler terms, it was about the future of 3D printing. I was able to take a good amount of notes on that session and complete my blog post.

The rest of the week mainly consisted of various PR jobs that I was given. For example, I emailed student chapters to update their roster, organized excel sheets, and updated OSA’s websites.

Thursday was probably my favorite day of the week because we had the opportunity to go to the DC Odyssey Dinner cruise. The view itself was great, but the food was the best part. My chocolate cake was to die for and the ribs I ate was some of the best I’ve had. To make it even more memorable, I danced the night away with the other interns and SPS staff.

On Friday, Andrew and I decided to spend our date night ordering pizza and going to karaoke with the other interns. I am a pretty shy girl, especially when it comes to singing, but it was a lot of fun to belt out my favorite tunes with such a great group of friends.

On Saturday we were invited to The National Orchestral Institute and Festival. It was hosted at the university of Maryland and let me tell you, it was HUGE! The walk from the metro to the performance building was quite long, but it was worth it for such a great concert! The musicianship and skill of the orchestra really blew me away and I couldn’t get over how great the solo pianist was.

I’m excited for this upcoming week and for the new things I can experience here in DC!

Week 4: I really need to start coming up with more interesting titles...

This week I had such a blast! OSA has free full body workout classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I have been getting over my laziness and working out for once! The instructor is great and I love the people around me, but my legs were sore for 3 days! I guess it just shows how much I need this class. On Monday I showed up to work and the elevators were dead. Usually this isn’t a big deal since there are stairs, but I only had the key card for the elevator, not the stairs! Luckly, though, I arrived at the same time as Maddie, Curtis, and James, so we all went out for breakfast while the elevators were getting fixed. The problem with the elevators continued the whole week. There was usually one elevator working though so it wasn’t a big deal. When I got to work, I continued doing my work for the Siegman School. As a recap from last week, the Siegman School project was where I was given a list of students who attended the Siegman School since 2014 and asked to enter them into OSA’s net forum database. There were only a few people I couldn’t add because their names weren’t in the system. I got about halfway through. I also had a meeting on how to edit the Optics4Kids website. I created the lesson plans for new activities my first week here, but they have yet to be added to the site. During this meeting, I was given access to edit the website and shown how to edit it.

On Tuesday, I spent most of the day finishing the Siegman School project. I also attended my weekly team meeting with the outreach group. In these meetings, everyone gives and update on what they are working on and how they can improve. Usually I just listen to the group talk about planning events, ordering T-shirts, and distributing awards. On Tuesday, though, I was asked to give an update on my work. It actually caught me off guard because I didn’t think I had to speak but I did fine. I just told them how far I was on the Siegman School project and told them about the people who couldn’t be added into the system. I also had another meeting with Terrence from IT. Last week, I sent out over 100 emails to student chapters asking them to update their roster. However, there were a few who emailed me back and said that they were unable to access the website because everyone in the presidency had an expired membership. Terrence taught me how to go into OSA’s membership records and edit information on it. I was able to add the person who emailed me as an officer and had them add the rest of the presidency.

Wednesday had a slow start. My advisor had the day off so I didn’t quite know what to do in the morning. Eventually, she emailed me with 2 jobs to do. The first one was to look through a finance report. I was to look at everything labeled as a Subsea project and find their name on the travel list. If they weren’t there or hadn’t payed the amount they were supposed to, I emailed her about it. There ended up being a ton of people who weren’t on the list. The second project was to look at the career section of the Optics4Kids website and decide what improvements needed to be made. I think this section is a great addition to the website, but it is extremely vague. I want to do more research on the careers that are already there and add more info. Later in the day, I had a meeting with Jen, another member of the outreach team who had a list of projects for me. The first project is updated a list of HBCU schools. I basically just google the school name, see if they have a physics or optics program, and write down their contact information. The second project was to look at the abstracts of students from Siegman School and make sure it looks accurate. I was originally excited for this project, but all the students are grad students so everything that they’ve written has gone completely over my head. I was told that I wasn’t expected to understand it though, and to mainly check for grammar. Another project had to do with a female scientist coloring book. The names of the scientists and the drawings are already taken care of, but I’m supposed to find facts about them to include. I also learned how to post blogs. I had written a blog previously, but it was never published. I was just shown how to publish it along with two other blogs.

I was given Friday off, so Thursday was my last day of the week. I spent Thursday switching between the HBCU list and looking at careers for the Optics4kids site. I didn’t finish either, but I got a decent amount done. The career page is split into 3 groups: academic, government, and industry. I have been mainly looking at industry jobs and have decided to include a job description, requirements, and education needed. The job description will be short and sweet, but the requirements is where it will be clearer on what is done. My hope is that high schoolers will be able to look at this website and have a better idea of what they want to do when they grow up.

After work Thursday, Andrew and I decided to go to Medium rare, a plave we were recommended to by co-workers. It had a set meal ist, but boy was it good. We started out with salads and bread, then were given a serving of fries and steak. Although it was good, Andrew and I were a little dissapointed with our portion size. However, the servers suprised us with a second serving! We were quite happy becasue we got all this for $23 each. For dessert, I ordered the double chocolate fudge layer cake (becasue why wouldn’t I order the most chocolatey thing on the menu ;) ) while Andrew got the six layer carrot cake. I was expecting a pretty small slice of cake, but that thing was huge! Not only that, but it was the essence of chocolatey goodness.

On Friday, Andrew and I emarked on our journey to New York! The bus ride was 5 and a half hours but it was worth it to not only see the city, but my family! We stayed at my aunt’s house in Campbell Hall and were basically treated like we were in a hotel. It was amazing. Unfortunaly, though, things rarely go to plan when you go on a trip. Of course the train decided not to come to campbell hall on the one weekend we were visiting. Thankfully, my aunt and uncle were kind enough to drive us 20 minutes to the next station. We then took the train into hoboken and the metro to nyc. It was soooo crowded. When we got to the city, Andrew and I were in complete awe. We loved the skyscrapers and different characters we saw. Our original plan was to go to the chrystler building and view the empire state building from there, but it was closed for some reason. Luckly, we found ourselves right next to it so we viewed it from below. Then we went to time square. We kinda just sat there and enjoyed the view for a while. My favorite part of the city, though, was walking around. There is just so much to see and enjoy there. We also loved trying New York Pizza for the first time. It truley is the best.

On Sunday I had a family cookout with my aunt, uncles, and cousins. It was so good and I’m so sad I left the food we were given in the car! But I am so excited to visit again soon!

ooooooooh we’re halfway theeere!!!!

I’m officially halfway done with my internship! It’s so crazy how fast time flies, especially when you have such a cool internship! this week was fun as always, but started out kind of rough since I got back from New York at around 4:30am and had to get up for work at 7:30. Nevertheless, I pushed forward!

On Monday, I focused on the HBCU project from last week. As a recap, I was given a list of predominantly black colleges and asked to make sure the info on the excel sheet was still accurate. My main job was to see if they had an optics or physics program and to get their contact info. I also had a meeting about the tour I’m giving to the other interns. Each intern has to give a tour of their work place, so I had to make sure the speakers knew what to talk about. A lot of the work that goes on in OSA requires knowledge in PR work, so many of my co-workers do not know physics. However, we do have a few employees in the publications department that are well versed in it. Our two speakers have a PhD in physics related topics and want to talk about how to get your work published. Per request of the interns, they may also be talking about what led them to go from physics to publishing and what they did for their PhD research.

On Tuesday, I finished the HBCU project. I was surprised to see that out of the 106 HBCU schools in the nation, only 7 had an optics program. On top of that, 58 schools didn’t even offer physics. After this project, I asked my mentor if I could look at the grant applications. Since the career I want to go in requires that I facilitate grants and my mentor is in charge of awarding those grants, I decided that it would be most beneficial if I started looking into those areas. She showed me examples of good and bad applications, and told me what they were looking for. My project would need to have a reason to complete it, and not just for the sake of furthering our knowledge. On top of that, it should be between 3 and 5 pages and explain why you are worth investing in. It was very helpful and I’m glad I got to look at it.

On Wednesday, I worked on the career section of Optics4Kids again. I was able to complete 4 jobs in the industry section: Optical Engineer, Ophthalmic Laboratory Technician, Laser Applications Engineer, and Fiber Optics Engineer. The first thing I did was change the job descriptions. Many of them were very vague and incorrect. In fact, they were all basically the same. I still kept it short, but it was a little more thorough. Next, I changed the responsibilities. The responsibilities were put into one sentence and basically mimicked the description. I changed it to bullet points and gave examples of what a worker would do on the job. Requirements section only had the degree, so I included what to get the degree in and what they should have an emphasis in. I had a hard time finding information on the other jobs, so I decided to switch to the coloring book project. The coloring book is supposed to have a number of female physicists with their accomplishments and interesting facts. There are currently 25 women on the list, but after looking up the info we hope to narrow it down to 15. I expected this project to be done pretty fast, but it was actually quite hard to find info on a number of these ladies. I was told that they were one of the leading scientists in a certain area, but not told why. I didn’t end up finishing but got about halfway through.

Friday was the deadline for OSA chapters to update their roster, so of course I got a flood of emails telling me complications they were having. They were all simple fixes so it didn’t take up to much of my day. A lot of the emails I sent ended up not sending, so my advisor and I worked to find out what was wrong. It turned out that the emails that failed were OSA accounts that no longer existed, so next week I need to get with the IT department and find a way to get the contact info for those people. I also was asked to help find catering for an event OSA is hosting. I only had to find 4 different catering places, so it wasn’t a hard or time consuming job. They rest of the day I continued working on the optics4kids career section, I finished the industry section and got most of the academic section done. The academic section needed the most work because it was obvious that the previous intern who had worked on it made a lot of stuff up. For example, you cannot get a job teaching medium level physics/optics to elementary school kids.

As always, Friday was date night! Andrew and I went to Arlington and ate at Gyu-Kaku, a Japanese grill. The food was so good! We were given a selection of meats to choose from and grilled them ourselves. The food tasted amazing and we even got s’mores to toast as our dessert. On Saturday, we went to the spy museum! We were given badges with secret code names and code words as well as a mission. We didn’t really do anything with that mission, but we did see all kinds of cool exhibits! There were videos of real life spies talking about how they took down their targets and simulations where you had to make the same decisions as the president. Afterwards, we went to BTS (Burger Tap and Shake) for burgers and a shake. Overall, I’d say it was a really amazing experience. Can’t wait for another 5 weeks!

The cupcake has been acquired

Hello all! Welcome to another week of me telling you everything there is to know about my internship. This week was a short week, so I really didn’t do much at work. I published the new activities onto the optics4kids website (check them out at optics4kids.com ) and read the abstracts of the Seigman school students. English isn’t the first language of many of these students, so I went ahead and corrected the grammar for them. Since it was the Fourth of July weekend, I was able to get out of work early on Wednesday and had a 4 day weekend!

Thursday was so much fun! We started the day by going to the boy’s room for an intern lunch (yes, this was the start of our day. Andrew and I slept in quite a bit...) where we were served mac n cheese, hotdogs, hamburgers, and watermelon. We all played a game called “We Didn’t Playtest This At All” and had a generally good time. Then at 3, we all left for Capitol Hill. Since Gia interns there, she was able to get us seats on the steps of the capitol building to watch the 4th of July concert and fireworks. It was a great view, but in order to get good seats we got there 5 hours early. It was quite humid and even started raining. Luckily we had an umbrella, but Andrew and I had to share one. We actually got evacuated for extreme weather and ended up just going home. I was actually really glad because I didn’t want to keep hearing the same 2 songs they had been rehearsing over and over again, nor did I want to be outside until 8 with no food. While we were home, Andrew and I made some delicious homemade hamburgers. It was my first time making my own patties and they came out way better than I was expecting! After eating, we headed back to Capitol Hill and watched the show. It was really cool. John Stamos (Uncle Jessie) and Sesame Street hosted it, but what made it really awesome were the performers. We heard Lindsay Sterling, the lady who sings “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman, Broadway songs, Carol king, and more! At exactly 9:07, the fireworks went off and were pretty cool. The only downside was that the smoke blew in our direction so it looked like actual bombs going off in the sky! Overall it was a pretty great 4th of July.

The next day Andrew and I went out to dinner with my aunt Florie. We went to an Italian place called Bertucci’s which I would not personally recommend. It was fun to catch up and talk though.

Saturday was an adventure. If you read my blog last week, you may remember me going to the spy museum. While I was there, I won a bet with my husband that he would get me a chocolate cupcake if I could hang from a bar for over 10 seconds (I got 30). Well on Saturday, I finally got that cupcake. However, this was no easy feat. You see, the cupcake shop was a 17 minute walk from our housing and of course, had no metro line close to it. The walk there was humid and warm, but we, along with Nicolas, Sami, Terry, and Noura, trudged through it. After all, the cupcake was worth it! When we got to the shop, the line was so long that it went outside and we had to stand in the humidity for a little while longer. Of course, Andrew and I happened to be wearing jeans instead of shorts, but again, the cupcakes would be worth it. We entered the store and bought our cupcakes (I got chocolate with vanilla buttercream frosting and Andrew got coconut), then left so we could hurry and enjoy our food at home. Mother Nature, however, must have heard that I wanted to eat healthier because she really did not want me to eat that cupcake. Just a few minutes after we had left the cupcake shop, it started pouring. I don’t just mean it was raining hard, I mean it was POURING. Neither Andrew nor I had checked the weather so we had no umbrella, but luckily Noura had brought one and I was able to share. It was raining so hard, though, that the umbrella really wasn’t helping. We eventually stopped using it because the wind was blowing it away. So there we were, running with the cupcakes in an incredible thunderstorm all to eat a cupcake. By the time we got home, we looked like we had just taken a shower with our clothes on. There was no part of us that wasn’t dripping. We got home and quickly changed out of our clothes and hanged them to dry. I opened the box and saw two wet cupcakes with frosting spread everywhere but the tops of the cupcake. Mother Nature must have been laughing, feeling like she had successfully stopped me from enjoying the sweet bliss that is known as chocolate. However, she greatly miscalculated. I love cupcakes much more that I hate messy food! Andrew and I ended up eating them while binge watching the first season of Stranger things. So take that Mother Nature!

While the rain did not ruin our cupcakes, it did soak my phone. The phone is water proof and still works, but unfortunatly when I charge it, I get an alert saying that the charging port has moisture and to unplug it. So now my phone sits in a cup of rice, dead and unwilling to charge. Hopefully it’ll start working again sometime soon!

Another Battle with Mother Nature

California has been going through a drought for over 10 years, so growing up I learned to really appreciate the rain whenever it came. I really love the rain, but unfortunately it doesn’t rain in DC. Instead, the sky opens up and sends a mighty waterfall to purge the city of any hope of getting to work dry. I was hit by this mighty waterfall last Saturday on my journey to get a cupcake. Apparently Mother Nature was very displeased that I ate that cupcake because she sent another flood to wash me away. Even though I took the metro instead of walking, I ended up with soaked shoes, pants, and shoulders. I guess an umbrella can only do so much. On top of that, I exited the metro on an unfamiliar side, so I got very lost and ended up 20 minutes late to work with no way to contact my advisor (mother nature claimed the life of my phone last weekend). But as always, I refuse to let nature get the best of me! I discovered a heater that had apparently been underneath my desk this whole time and was able to dry my socks and shoes with it! On top of that, all the interns had lunch with Liz (the CEO of OSA) so we got free food!

As for work, I was asked to update the arrival and departure list for the OSA’s Seigman School in Finland. On it, I looked at the flight information of the attendees and added their flight information so that my advisor knew whether or not she should schedule them a train. The next thing I did was update the housing list. I mainly had to make sure that those who were on the attendee list were registered for housing. After that I was given my next big project. I was given a list of 314 women who had received an award from OSA and asked to check to see which of them did not have a wiki page. I was able to get about 100ish women done before I left work.

On Tuesday, I didn’t have work because all of the SPS interns went on a Capitol Hill tour! Gia, the intern that works there, led us on an awesome tour where we were able to see learn about how the government works and see the beautiful architecture of the Capitol. My favorite parts were looking at the statues of the 13 colonies and seeing all the beautiful paintings. Andrew and I were even able to get Capitol shirts from the gift shop! At the end, we even got to speak to the only senator who is a physicist, which was pretty cool.

On Wednesday, I finished searching for wiki pages for all the women. In the end, 240 out of the 314 women did not have a wiki page. I sent the excel sheet back to Marcia (the one who gave me the project) and she arranged the list of women in order of importance. I was asked to research information on all the women marked with a 1 and try to gather enough information to make a wiki page. This was actually a lot harder that I thought it’d be because some of these women had almost no internet presence.

Thursday was really exciting because I had the NASA tour! Anyone who knows me knows it’s my dream to work at NASA, so I was pretty happy that I got to tour there. The first thing we did was go to a Jamboree where different people in NASA had booths presenting their research. The one I was most interested was the research on the gravity of two black holes when they merge together. I was shown models of the devices that NASA used to measure their data and shown charts of what they had measured. This is what I would most be interested in doing, so I asked them to give me advice on the path to take. They ended up taking my information and told me where to apply for an internship next summer!

After the Jamboree, we looked at the libraries and walked through a lab. It was really cool to see the people in what looked like quarantine outfit conducting research. It was actually suits to keep their germs out of the room, because the room was kept so clean that the dirtiest thing in those rooms were the people. We also had Nolan and Terry (the NASA interns) talk about what they do and saw some cool equipment. I got myself a NASA t-shirt and he got a NASA magnet (they didn’t have any shirts left in his size). Overall I had a ton of fun!

After the tour, we had the intern picnic, and of course, Mother Nature struck again. When we got off the bus, the flood gates opened. Luckily, Andrew and I had brought our umbrellas, but the posters Andrew got were soaked! Once we got to the metro, our legs were pretty wet but we were able to keep most of our bodies dry. We all rode the metro to the APS building and I got to see Andrew’s work area. They served barbeque food, so I had roast beef and mac n cheese. I was surprised it was vegan because it definitely tasted like real cheese! Andrew and I played battleship which I was absolutely crushed at, and I watched him play settlers of Catan with some of the other interns.

On Friday, I got evicted! It really wasn’t all that bad, especially since it was a cubicle and not a home. They were having a bunch of new people coming to the 6^th floor so I had to move to a desk that is only sometimes in use. It was a little sad to not have my own space but it worked out alright. Despite this, my day was still amazing because it was bring your dog to work day! Every Friday, workers are allowed to bring in their dogs and this was the first week that my advisor had brought in hers! She was such a sweet and calm doggie and I absolutely love her! We also had a work party where we were able to mingle and eat lumpia, cake, and cupcakes! It’s fair to say that I had way too much sugar.

On Sunday, Andrew, Eric, and I went to the national arboretum! We saw a bunch of bonsai trees and beautiful nature. It was nice to get out of the city and enjoy the greenery for a while.

Week 8: Luxurious Homelessness

So on Monday I became homeless....not really but I did have to work in the kitchen. The 6^th floor had become over crowded with people, so I had to work elsewhere. But it really isn’t bad at all! After all, the lunch room does have a flat screen TV, close access to hot chocolate, and comfy couches. There was even some leftover cake brought in and I had first dibs! So really, I suppose I got an upgrade.

Work this week was pretty relaxed. I was able to finish gathering information on the wiki pages I was working on and helped my mentor prepare for the Siegman School that OSA hosts in Finland. The only difficult thing was publishing the career section of the optics4kids website. It turns out that there is a character limit instead of a word limit, so I had to drastically alter everything I had written. No matter though, I quite enjoy working on Optics4Kids.

On Tuesday we had the NIST tour which was tons of fun! My favorite part was being in the anechoic chamber, also known as one of the quietest places on Earth. Walking in, I immediately noticed the strange feeling in my ears. There were sounds being produced by my steps and the people around me, but everything just felt so still. It was so quiet, that you could hear your own stomach fluids. I honestly would have loved to just spend all day marveling at the silence. The second coolest thing was a piece of the twin towers after it had collapsed. The twin towers were built to withstand the impact of a plane, so people were confused as to why the towers crashed. It turns out that the planes had knocked off the flame retardant, causing the safety measures to melt.

Friday was another fun day. To celebrate National Ice Cream Day, the office had an ice cream party! They served us Ben and Jerry’s with cookies and brownies! On top of that, there was more leftover cake so I was all sugared out. After eating my ice cream, I went downstairs to welcome the other interns to the OSA tour! Since OSA isn’t a campus, we didn’t have an all day tour like the other tours I’ve been on. Instead, we had a few speakers and pizza. We were privileged to have Alison Taylor and Stewart Wills from the journaling team come and tell us how to get our works published. Alison had little quizzes and prizes for us so we had fun. After that, I gave the interns a brief tour of the office and explained what goes on in the office. We then sat and ate pizza. It was a pretty fun day.

My favorite part of the week was going to the 50^th Anniversary of Apollo 11 at the Washington Monument! It was packed with thousands of people, but luckily Andrew and I were able to find good seats. Before the show had started, I was pretty entertained by the oncoming lightning and the people chanting, “Please sit down!” to those who were standing. When the show finally started, the Apollo 11 was projected on the Washington Monument and I was able to experience the coolest 17 minutes of my life! I’m so glad that I was able to come to DC during this historic time and experience so much!

My time in DC is dwindling and so is my work load

This week was my last full week, and boy will I be sad to leave! I’ve met so many wonderful people here at OSA and I am so greatful that I’ve had the opportunity to work with them. This week was pretty low key, so this is going to be a short blog. On Monday my day consisted of correcting some printing errors in the Seigman School abstracts, uploading the rest of the career section of Optics4Kids online, and researching how to improve OSA’s optics education directory. Tuesday consisted of prepping for the Seigman School by making a spreadsheet of who needs a hotel, printing name tags, and seeing how many african countries/ people applied to a certain award. On Wednesday I really didn’t do much. I made a spreadsheet of the arrival and departure times of the Seigman school students. I also made a list of names, emails, arrival and departure times, and whether or not they need a hotel. The best part about Wednesday was that we had an office party! Donny, someone from IT, was leaving so we had a star wars theamed going away party. The cookies there were quite amazing and literally melted in my mouth. On Thursday, I was asked to look up printing companies in Rochester NY and get a rush order for the next day. That took up a significant part of my day because there was a lot to order and not many companies could do it on short notice. After that, I was emailed a ton of tickets and asked to compile them into one pdf. Then I printed them out and put the name that belonged to the ticket on the back. I ended the day by helping set up the reception for the innovation school and serving drinks. Since it had been such a slow week, I was given Friday off.

The most exciting part of my week was going to the big apple on Saturday! The last time we went, Andrew and I really had no idea where to go so we kind of wasted out trip. This time, though, we had my cousin giving us the grand tour! We ended up going to the Belvedere Castle, Central Park, the statue of liberty, Little Italy, the M & M Factory, the bull and little girl statue, viewing all of NYC through the NY Times building, and watching Wicked! It was such a fun time and I’m so glad I got to spend it with my family!