Charles Wszalek, 2024 APS Career Programs Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Hello! My name is Charles Wszalek. I’m the APS Careers intern this summer. I’m currently pursuing my B.S. in Space Physics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Prescott. I have been doing theoretical and experimental research on Gravitational Waves for the last two years, but lately I have also been looking into focusing on new fields to broaden my horizons. Besides school work, I’m currently the vice-president of my school’s SPS chapter and was just elected to be president next year! I have also had a great time working as a physics teaching assistant and lab-tech this last year.

Internship

Host: American Physical Society

Internship Blog

Week 1: What I’ve Learned

Hello friends, family, and future, present, and past interns

I thought for a while about what my first blog should be and I’ve decided to write down all of the things I’ve learned, about DC and myself, that i wish I would have known a week ago. So this will mostly be a summary, but I’ll try to focus on the parts where I learned something.

On Sunday morning I flew in from Phoenix. By around 7:00 pm, I’d dropped my stuff at my room. Now, I was on a mission to find food. I hadn’t really eaten since breakfast at the airport. At first I went to the closest grovery story I could, Market at Columbia Plaza, which is right around the corner from the building, but they were closed. This likely ended up being a good thing though, becuase the next day I went back and found that all of the food is way too expensive for what it was. I ended up going to the next closest grocery store, which was a Whole Foods. The food there was also way too expensive, but at least the frozen meals I got were good. I realized while I was in the store that I didn’t have any pots or pans, but I knew that in a few days we’d be getting things from previous year’s interns.

The next morning, Monday, I decided to go for a run. I haven’t been doing a lot of cardio when I exercise and felt like the change of scenery was a good excuse to start. Our dorm rooms almost couldn’t be closer to the national mall. I ended up running way further than I was planning to just becuase there was so much to see. However, that did turn parts of my “run” into a walk. Later that day after we had all settled in we played some games as a group. It was a really fun and interesting experience to play Mafia with a group of people I’d never met before.

On Tuesday, we all got dressed up in buissness formal attire and head to the American Center for Physics (ACP) together for our orientation. While orientations can sometimes be a blur of information that drags on, I thought the day flew by. My team won the spagetti and marshmellow tower building team building exercise. We played some Bocce on the roof where there’s a wonderful view of the city. We got our headhsots taken. Ate some delicous lunch. Learned a lot about each other. All on all, it was a very good day.

Due to some lingering jetlag I woke up way later than I was planning to on Wednesday, so I decided not to go into the ACP for my internship and wokr remotely. The APS careers position is fully remote this year, because the American Physical Society (APS) is a remote first workplace. I think that some of my fellow interns are going to fully take advantge of the remote days of their positions, but I learned quickly on Wednesday that I can not be productive working from my dorm. I had a quick meeting with my mentor to solidify our plans for the summer. We solidified that I would be helping to solidify some the existing Physicist Profiles on the APS Careers website and fill in the gaps of careers with new interviews. That evening I went to the thrid closest grocery store, Trader Joe’s. Trader Joes should be the first top for all future interns reading this. Don’t even bother going to the markey and Whole Foods.

Thursday morning I woke up to my first alarm and had my two back up alarms waiting for me in case I ended up over sleeping again. I could not work in my bedroom again. I had head some of the interns takling abou thow they went to the ACP the day before and figured that I’d have some good company when I showed up. To my supprise, I was going to have a more productive day than I expected, no one was there. There were a few super kind APS employees that I ate my lunch with, but other than that all of the other employees were remote that day. With that, I had no distractions and read through a ton of the Physicist Profiles to prepare for my tasks this summer. That night I talked to some of my fellow interns about how nice the ACP facillites were and they decided that they would join me on Friday.

Friday morning a few other interns and myself went to the ACP and got ourselves set up and some of the workstations. What I found out that day was that while working in my room alone was not going to lead to peak productivity, working with a bunch of friendly people I was just getting to know was also not going to lend itself to peak prodcutivity. This up coming Monday I am determined to find the right balance. Once we had all finished our responsibilities for the day, we headed to one of the other intern’s dorms for some more games and had a great time! We also today got our supplies from the pervious interns. Future interns keep in mind that for the first few days, you’ll only have what you bring. It is up to one of you to drive and get the bins. You can likely read Kai’s blog for more info.

Saturday when I woke up I decided to go for a run. It was definitely hotter than the pervious run, but it still felt really good to get out. Then I did some chores and errands like laundry and shopping (again at Trader Joe’s). Once my laundry was finsihed I met a group of us that had gone to the National Mall for some spike ball, ultimate frisbee, and football. Being from somewhere much less humid than DC, the heat really got to me. I was pooped after a few hours of playing different games. Once we had all gone back to our dorms and showered, a bunch of us hung out again and met up with one last year’s interns and her boyfriend. It was really interesting to get to know them for a bit and hear about their experiences in DC. Later that night, me and a few others played the most fun games of go fish that I’ve ever played and some almost as fun games of spoons.

When I woke up on Sunday, today as I’m wiriting this, A group of us wen to the DuPont Circle Market and ended up geting some fresh strawberries, pickles, and a book. I also did a lot of work on the summer Macro-economics course I’m taking online after we got back. I ended up squeezing a leg day in at the gym right before it closed. Future interns keep in mind that because the gym is staffed by student employees they will likely have significantly shorter hours on weekends. For me it was 10:30 to 4:00 today, instead of 6:30 to 8:00. I then wrote up most of the bog you have just read through and ended up watching the first two Indiana Jones movies with some of the interns, a few of whom had never seen them.

Overall I had a great week, and I hope that some of the things I mentioned will help future interns make the most of their first week.

(Below are some pictures from my Satuday run, soon I’ll learn how to imbed them in the text. But for now, this will have to do : ) )

Week 2: So Much Happened

Hello everyone!

I feel like this was the first real week of work. On Monday and Tuesday of this week I felt like I was really moving towards a goal. I had read through almost all of the Physicist Profiles , and I had a short list of the people whos interviews I wanted to update.

On Wednesday I talked with Midhat, my mentor, and she helped me reach out to the first few people. Once that day was over I stuck around the ACP and we got to attend the most recent Trimble Lecture , “The Next Great Space Telescope: Lessons for Success in the Search for Life Outside the Solar System”. It was so interesting to hear with probably the most experienced people in regards to JWST think about our future. Before and after the lecture I did a lot of netoworking. One of my main goals for this internship was to network and meet as many different and intersting people as I could. Before the lecture I talked with Earl Blodgett, the SPS historian and one of my favorite people. He introduced me to someone who worked at Fermilab and CERN in the past. Later that night I directed him to Alejandro de la Puente, the SPS director, so that we might be able to schedule a time for all of the interns to talk with him more. I also had an opportunity to talk with a man who does contract work for many different large scale operations. I don’t think that I have heard any first hand experience from a contract worker doing applied physics work, so I gave him my card and told him that I would be happy to interview him for his own profile.

While I was sitting in the lecture, I turned around and saw a man that looked very familar, but I couldn’t place who he was or where I had seen him. I turned to Jenna and she said that they had never seen him before, so I thought that maybe I was getting him confused for someone else. At the end of the lecture, I asked Jaden if he recognised him and he did, but had the same problem that I originally did. Shortly after that, he ends up close enough that I can read his lanyard, Robert Petre - NASA. After a quick google search, I get on NASA’s website and I see the word DIRECTOR. Robert Petre is the Director of Astrophysics NASA Goddard. After a minute or two of hyping myself up I grab a few other interns and I introduce myself. All in all, it went very well, he seems like an amazing guy with a passion for people and progressing physics. He even offered to help schedule a tour of Goddard for the interns and passed out his buisness cards to all of us to make it happen! On top of that, we also got to meet Chirstopher Stark, the Deputy Observatory Project Scientist for JWST.

The next day, Thursday, was a roller coaster. I had recently updated my linkedin and had been adding people in pursuit of my goal of networking, so once I got to work at the ACP I sent Robert a linkedin connection with a message about how much I appreciated his time the night before. He doesn’t have many linkedin connections so I didn’t expect anything back, but within a few hours, I get a message from him and a notification that he had been added to my network. Only a few moments later, I noticed that the “Connect” button was back on his linkedin page, as if I had never tried to connect. My first thought was that he was trying to keep his network small so that his linkedin feed wasn’t full of a bunch of random people, which is completely reasonable. I went on with my buisness sending some emails about scheduling interviews and reading though more profiles. Later that day I tried to connect with Chris and I got a notification that he had also been added to my network, but then when I wen to this page, again I saw the “Connect” button. Now I’m thinking that there is some key piece of linkedin norms that I’m missing. Is it common for people to approve connections and then immediately disconnect? At lunch I talked with Jaden, the intern with probably more linkedin connections than the rest of us combined, to see if he had any insight into what was going on. He said he was just as confused as me and we joked about some outlandish explainations for what happened. After that, I had a great meeting with the APS webteam about how some ideas that Midhat and I had could be implimented on the APS website like filters and recomended pages. Far later in the day annother I get annother linked in notification that my uncle had added me back, but again when I check his page, I see “Connect”. At this point I know something weird is going on. I check a website that collects website complains and plots them over time to see if something weird was going on with linkedin on that day. Sure enough, right at 7:00 am there is a big spike in reports that continued well into the afternoon. Finally the missing piece was revealed. We then all headed to the metro to get on a boat for a netowrking dinner cruise and on the way there Alejandro told me about a friend of his that has a physics degree and works as a fighter pilot. I told him that I was looking for interesting people to interview and he seemed like a great person to talk to.

The next morning I checked in on my linkedin and found that all three of the strangely behaving profiles had gone back to normal. I sent emails to Robert about scheduling our tour, Alejandro about his pilot friend, and read through more profiles to find people I thought could use an update to their profile. Once the day was done, a few of us went to the National Gallery of Art - Sculpture Garden for Jazz in the Garden. It was a very chill evening. Charlotte, one of the interns, doesn’t watch a lot of movies, so on our way back to our dorms we came up with a list of movies to watch over the rest of the internship. That night we ended up watching Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull and Shrek, a great combo!

On Saturday I finally made it our for annother run. This time I ran to Theodore Roosevelt Island, one of my favorite places in DC. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the first of many beatings my legs were going to take over the next few days. Right after getting cleaned up after the run I walked to get groceries and then we walked to the Natual History Museum. We then walked to the DC Pride Parade, which was definitely the highlight of the day. Everyone there was just so happy to be there! With all of that though I hadn’t been off my feet all day.

On sunday I woke up and my legs felt so tired and achey. Using them at all was tiring in the morning. We then talked about going to the zoo and spent several hours there. Not only was the zoo free, but it also had some very unique animals. At this point everything below my knees felt like it had detached from me, but that made sitting down in my room that much better. I worked on some economics homework, wrote this blog and went to bed.

Week 3: A Very Full Week

Hello everyone!

Monday was a very productive day. I read through several more profiles to see if they needed to be updated. The most interesting part of the day was meeting with Reidyn and his mentor Chrstine. We talked about Reidyn’s project of creating more personas for APS. I’m sure you could read Reidyn’s blog for much more info on personas, but a persona list of traits and characteristics that sttempt to represent a group of people, i.e. undergrad students looking into a Physics Masters, highschool students looking into a degree in physics, etc. This was an interesting meeting because his project is similar to mine, but they will be used in very different ways. He need to interview poeple to create personas to help employees of APS better understand who they are serving and I need to interview people to create profiles to serve the groups he’s looking into. We also talked about a few ways that we could work together and ask particular questions to our interviewees to better eachother’s projects. I also got to talk to Jaden about his work at STSCI. He started working with an API to call info from Hubble and JWST, but didn’t have much context for what he was doing. I worked very briefly with APIs in my Python class a few years ago so I sent him the code I had and we talked about some of the common things that may come up.

By Tuesday afternoon I had finally finished reading through all of the profiles and determining which ones needed to be updated. During lunch that day Jaden and I talked a lot about how different Massachusetts and Arizona are. There are so many small things that make living in each place so different. Later that night, I get a random text from Maia asking if I want to make a deal. They wanted to have some peaches and cream, but was having a hard time whipping the cream, so I was invited over to enjoy the peaches and cream on the condition that I help with the cream. The result was delicious, but I don’t think my shoulder has been the same since. We also had a great coversation about her home and family in Hong Kong and how it differs from my experiences in Arizona. For whatever reason today I learned a lot about what other intern’s homes are like.

Now that I knew which profiles needed to be updated, all of the ones that were up-to-date recieved tags about what their jobs were and what type of physics they used in their positions. During lunch that day, Alejandro took those of us that were at the ACP out to lunch at Roti for some mediteranian food. I couldn’t participate in it because I was running for a position on the SPS National Council, but all of the other interns at the ACP got to help certify the elections. Later that day, I finalized my second interview, with Deborah Berebichez, and it was scheudled to be my first one! Once the day was over Maia and I thought it would be cool to try out the 24/7 ACP gym. When we got up there, we found that a spin class was starting in 5 minutes and there were two more slots on the sheet open. With neither of us never having taken a spin class before we had no idea what to expect. After 45 minutes go by, I think I might have been the sweatiest I have ever been, I will spare the details in the blog, but just know it was crazy! After the class I rushed back to the dorms and got cleaned up to go to the Warf for a free concert from a Red Hot Chili Peppers cover band and some cornhole. Over all, a great day.

On Thursday from the very beginning, I was pooped. The spin class killed me. When I go to work I started using Asana, a workflow managemnet software, to keep track of the porgress I was making on the profiles. I had never had a reason to use a gannt chart, but in the most lame way ever, I think they might be my favorite way to organize things. I had a lot of different tasks on Thursday. I finalized the questions I was going to ask Deborah Berebichez during her update interview. I made a new condensed spread sheet of all of the people that need to be contacted. I also, reached out to Kenny Jensen and Jim Caron on LinkedIn, to see if they were interested in an interview. After work that day, I ran to Trader Joe’s for some food and we got together to watch Spy Kids. Definitely look at Jaden’s blog for more detail on that.

Friday morning I got to interview Deborah. We had a super interesting coversation about her work experience. She has done so many amazing generous things in her life, that it’s too much to go into, but when the updated profile is posted, it is definitely worth a read. I also found out that she was one of five scientists on the Discovery Channel’s Outrageous Acts of Science, a show I have disinct memories of watching at my grandparents house as a kid. When I was little I never even considered that I could ever meeting the scientists on the show, but by luck, I did. Friday was also made even better than it already was because we all out free food two times! We got leftover Tatte for breakfast and leftover Cava for lunch! I also got Kenny’s email, so I reached out to him more directly and very quickly got an interested response.

A group of us went to the National Galley of Art for a bit of the day and then drove in Kai’s car to Unique to try to find some clothes to thrift. Once we got back, the rest of the night was filled with Economics homework.

Sunday was then full of even more homework. I tried to take a break and go to the gym at 10 when they open, but apparently the fire alarm had been going for hours and no one could turn it off. I waited to see if something would change, and I finally gave up after an hour of sitting around watching youtube videos. All in all, a very good week!

Week 4: Maddie’s Here!!

Hi everyone!

Yet annother great week!

On Monday I started my day with a quick leg day at the gym in the morning. When I got back to the dorm to make my eggs, one of them had a double yolk. I’m not sure what that means, but I am sure that someone thinks that means something so read into it as you will. The rest of the day I worked on Deborah’s profile and worked with Maia and the other interns to make sure we could explain the demos we were going to use later this week. After work that day a group of us went down to the mall and played some spike ball and hung out. I was convnced to try to do a headstand while we were there and by the end I had someone pulled some muscles in my core, a very scary sensation.

Tuesday Maia and I went to the gym in the building with the ACP office. I defintiely want to go to the gym in the morning more frequently because while it is a little busy, it is much less busy than the gym near the dorm. After we had some left over Panera from whatever event was going on at ACP, I had Demeber’s interview for her profile. Not only was she was great to talk to, I feel like I was much more confisdent in the questions I wanted to ask and the way I asked them. It’s interesting to watch myself learn something like this because there is a decent amount of quick thinking that needs to be done for follow up questions, but I also need to be thinking about how the answers are going to fit into a narrative of their life. This evening we went back to the mall to hang out and got back to and a few rounds of bananagrams.

We started our Wednesday with a brunch at Founding Farmers because most of us had the day off for Juneteenth. After that, we went to the National Portrait Gallery for a few hours. Once we left the gallery we started preparing for the dumpling potluck that night. Maia thought it would be fun to get everyone together to make dumpings and also have people bring things so we had more than just dumplings. I was a great time. I brought some pizza I made, but I think it tasted a little like lunchables. I think the sauce being too processed, the oven not being hot enough, and the dough being premade from Trader Joe’s all came together to make a giant lunchable. Late in the evening after we had all eaten, everyone suprised me with a cake and card for my birthday. It was great to have everyone in the same place and be able to spend some time together.

On the morning of my 21st birhtday, my girlfriend, Maddie, arrived in DC off of her red eye from Phoenix. Later that day I had my now third interview with John. This was a particualrly important one because this was the first person I’ve interviewed that didn’t already have a profile. I think I did a good job, but I’m curious to see if I have enough information on him to made a good profile. That evening we went out to a 18+ club to celebrate my birthday. A few of the interns, including myself until a few days ago, aren’t 21 yet and I wanted to make sure that everyone that wanted to go, could go. Supposedly, this lead us to go to a place that wasn’t the best, but I don’t have much to compare it to. Luckily we also called the night at around 12 so it was pretty each to get back on schedule for Friday.

Friday was a typical day. I worked on the profiles that I had started and started to near the end for a couple. After work that day, some of us went to the French Embasy for a French culture night. It was a great time. Some of the live music was a little weird, others were very impactful, and some later in the night got everyone there up dacing.

A lot of Saturday was taken over by the Giant BBQ Battle. Every year the grocery store chain Giant hosts a BBQ battle to decide who has the best BBQ in the US. As you can probably guess this was a great time, but it was CRAZY hot. While in Phoenix it gets into the 120s, it was only around 100 and if felt so much worse. we ended up leaving sooner than I would have hoped, but we did get a lof of free stuff. I am now the proud owner of an umbrella hat. Once we had all made it back to the dorms we started getting ready fot Astronomy on the Mall. This was a crazy event. It was supposed to be outside, but because of the heat it was moving into one of the smithsonian buildings. There was a catch though, there was already an event in that building and it just so happened to be, what I think was an EDM concert, but we may never know what it really was. All in all, there was a crazy combo of small children and families and 20-somethings coming to dance at this wild concert. I taught a lot of unsuspecting dancers trying to get to the dance floor about the types of waves and space time. Over all, a great time. That night a few of us went out to some bars to celebrate my 21st birthday again.

Sunday morning, Maddie and I went to Tatte for breakfast. I had never been, but I had gotten some Tatte leftovers from annther ACP event, so I was really looking forward to it. After that, Maddie and I just hung out together for a bit and packed up her stuff for her flight that afternoon. I’m so happy that she was able to come out to see me. We already don’t see eachother very often over the school year, so having gaps isn’t unusual, but its always sad and a month and a half can be a lot of any realtionship.

It’s so great to have a group of friends here who will go out of their way to make sure that I have a good birthday and that Maddie could make it out for even just a few days.

Week 5: Roller Coaster of a Week

Hello everyone!

Overall this was another great week! On Monday I finished Deborah’s profile. Midhat was on a vacation, so I had to just sit on it for a few days, but soon I’d ask her to review it. I also worked with Maia and SPS to finalize the Goddard tour! I think we are going to be able to see a lot of extremely intersting things that wouldn’t usualy be on a normal tour.

Tuesday morning I woke up and went to the gym with Maia. I wanted to work out legs, but the gym in the ACP building doesn’t have a barbell so I had to break out of my routine and try some different dumbell exercises. That day at work I did a lot of work on Colonel John Dirk’s profile. After that, I got to interview Jan Kleinert, Director of Research at ESI. We had a great conversation and I think his profile will halp a lot of people that are looking to leave academia for an industry job. After work that day 8 of us went to a bar a few metro stops away for a free trivia night. It was super fun and after we got there we learned that the second round was going to be Shrek themed! A bunch of us had just watched the movie together so we thought that it would go pretty well. We ended up in third after the first general round, but then after the Shrek round we were midway thtough the 20 or so teams. While we definitly didn’t win, I think we did way better than I was expecting us to.

On Wednesday morning I wanted to go to the gym again, but I decided that sleep was more important at the time, especailly because I was already sore from all of the new leg exercises the day before. During the day I worked more on Colonel Dirk’s profile and had a meeting with Midhat about if there were any people at APS that she could help introduce me to. Midhat also works with a group in APS called the Communnity Mentoring (CM) Fellows who work with students or early career physicists to help progress their careers. She asked me to look through that list of people too to see if I wanted to meet with any of them. Then that afternoon there was a CM Fellows meeting and while I didnt’ participate in the meeting I got to see what goes on behind the scene which was super interesting.

Thursday was filled with more time going through John’s interview and synthesizing the core points into his profile. Later that day I had a meeting with Denise about how we could use the meetings with the people I’m interviewing to make short clips for APS social media accounts. That night Zahra, someone I reached out to a few weeks ago, got back to me about having a meeting which is very exciting. Then that night I ran to Trader Joe’s for some groceries and went to the GW gm right before it closed.

On Friday I had our first SPS Check-In meeting to make sure that everything was going well and that we would have enough work done by the end of the summer to be able to present. Those of us interns that work for APS were all invited to a virtual lunch with some of the other APS staff and were given a giftcard to buy lunch. That was a great time. It was fun to talk to the people I have meetings with about more informal topics like the rats in DC and where we like to go get food. After work Amanda brought Reidyn and I to her climbing gym to try some bouldering, something that she really enjoys. Reidyn and I had a great time and were really considering getting a membership because of how fun it was. The only issue is that because the gym was so nice, the membership price is higher than I’d like to pay. After we were done climbing, we went to the Kenedy Center to see an outdoor showing of Ratatouille. It was a very nice way to end the day.

Satuday morning Charlotte, Kaden, and I wento for a quick run to Theodore Roosevelt Island to start the day. Then I ran a few errands with Kaden and went back to the dorms. After that a lot of my day was spent relaxing and doing economics homework.

Sunday was a much more full day. We left for Cunningham Falls State Park in Maryland. We started by going to the water falls that the park is named after, which were amazing and then we went to a beach on a lake in the park. Just as we got to the lake, Muji fell on some uneven ground and really messed up his ankle. Ironically enough, he fell right by a group of people that happened to have a Pediatrist among them. Muji decided that to play it safe he should go to the hospital to get it checked out. A couple of us helped Muji get to the ER of the closest hospital and we had one of the quickest easiest ER visits ever. As soon as we got there, they have Muji a wheelchair and then started taking his infomration down. Then as soon as they had the info they needed they took us straight to a room. Once we were in the room we had a few different people come in and help Muji, every single one was fast, efficient, and happy to be helping. We were out of the ER with a brace for Muji’s ankle and confirmation that no bones were broken within around an hour to an hour and a half. We drove back to the lake and picke d the rest of the group up and went back to the dorms. While the second half of the day didn’t go as I expected, I had a great time hanging out with Muji and Jaden’s friend Chris at the ER. Then when I got back I was going to finish my economics homework, but the due date had suddenly changed to a time that wasn’t even during this semester so I couldn’t do any work. I sent the professor an email and still haven’t heard anything back, but hopefully it all gets sorted out. Because I now couldn’t do the work I thought I could I decide to joing some of the other interns in Jaden’s room to watch Cars.

While some days didn’t go as expected, we all made the most of the week and had a good time!

Week 6: Collins is here!

Hello again!

Monday of this week I started by reviewing Midhat’s comments on Deborah’s profile. Then that afternoon I had an interview with Walker Steere to learn about him and his career to write a physicist profile on him. Once work was done I went to Trader Joe’s for some groceries and then made some delicious chicken thoughs for dinner.

Tuesday was a very full day. It started with the part of the office where all of our desks were smelling like rotten eggs. No one could place where it was coming from and we didn’t know how to put in a work order so luckily we found an employee of the building to help us. Then SPS organized an BYOL (bring your own lunch) event for us where we learned about the history of physics. There’s so much history that I had no idea about, I definitely need to start looking into more of the people and intitutions that have made physics what it is today. After lunch, I continued organizing December’s information and figuring out what needed to be added to her profile. Once work was over, a few of us went to a trivia night at Present Company Public House. While we didn’t place very well in the rankings, I had a delicous Cuban sandwich.

On wednesday I met again with Midhat and we went through Deborah and John’s profiles one more time so that we could send them to the web team for review. While Mithat and I have all of the say on what is communicated in the profile we need the webteam to make sure that we are following the APS style guide and that were are using verbiage that APS approves of. That evening we watched Superbad. I thought that I had seen it and I had always heard good things about, so I was excited to watch it. After having seen it, for what felt like the first time, I would not recomend it to anyone.

The 4th of July was this thursday, it was annother very full day. In the morning, I went with Jenna to Trader Joe’s to get popcicles for the BBQ we were going to have at Jaden’s Frat’s house. Once I was back, I picked up the hotdogs Charlotte had ordered and we headed to the house. After grilling up 40 hotdogs and having some popcicles we headed back to the dorms to refresh ourselves. We were told by some locals and people that had been to the fireworks show on the national mall before, that we should get there around 4:00 if we wanted a good spot so we had a quick turn around after the BBQ. We ended up arriving around 4:30 to find that there were far fewer people than we expected. As it turns out, that was not only because we were not in the right place, but also because it was going to rain from around 5:00 to 6:30. Becasue we were waiting around so much Maia, Brynn, and I ended up going for a walk to look around. We happened to find where all of the people were and where we should have been. Luckily becuase of the rain the location was not nearly as full as it should have been and we got plenty of space of all os us in a place with a much better view. After waiting around for a few more hours and a few more interns arriving, the fire works began. For the past several years I haven’t really enjoyed watching 4th of July fire works as much as I used to, but this year was actually very nice. I’m not sure what was different this year, but they were again, very nice.

The next morning, I began working on the Economics homework with Jenna that was due on sunday and went climbing with Reidyn. Even though this was only my second time climbing I feel like I’ve learned a lot! Then that evening after climbing Jenna, Charlotte, Charlotte’s boyfriend, and I played a game of Catan. I had a great time, but really missed a lot of the nuances of how the game should be played and lost pretty badly.

Saturday was a very slow day compared to the rest of the week. I mostly just watched youtube and worked on my homework, but then that evening Collins’ plane arrived! I’m not sure that I talked much about it in the blogs so far, but my roommate, Collins, had some issues getting to DC so I had been alone in my dorm room for the past month. While it can be nice to have a place to myself, I’m very excited to have someone to live with. Once we got the text that his plane landed Reidyn and I went to DCA to pick him up and help him get back to Shenkman. There was something weird going on with the baggage carousel so it took a bit to get his bags, but then we smoothly made it back to the the dorms.

The next morning, Collins and I took a trip to Trader Joe’s and then Charlotte invited us to go with her and a couple other people to the Lincoln Memorial and a few other monuments. Collins had said that he wanted to go see some the iconic DC attractions so I was super happy that found time so quickly after his arrival. Once we got back I went with Reidyn to the climbing gym again. There was a V2 (boulder rankings go VIntro, V0, V1, ...) that I had a really hard time with on friday that I was excited to try again, but I sadly didn’t make much progress on it. I did make a lot of progress on ther V2s and even some V3s though. Then we stopped by Costco on the way back to the dorms to get some cheap dinner, but I realized that I needed to get a new card with a new picture and I was very conveniently all sweaty from climbing. Then there was a huge line to get food, so we ended up waiting for I think about a half hour to get our single chicken bake and single slice of pizza. I’m not sure that the savings were worth it. For the past week we had been planning for most of us to come see Collins on Sunday evening, so I ordered some pizzas on the metro ride home and finalized some of the logistics of the supprise. Then right around 7:00 a bunch of the inerns showed up at our door to greet Collins, play some gUno, and enjoy some pizza! Then, later that evening, a group of us watched The Dark Night, but I had to leave early to put some finishing touches on economics homework.

Again, a very good week. I’m so glad that Collins could finally join us!

Week 7: What Are My Career Options?

Hi everyone!

On monday, I continued to work on December’s profile and my final presentation for the internship. I sent an outline for the slides, an abstract, and a title to Midhat for approval. That evening I was roped into watching the later half of the Batchellorette after I finished making some dinner.

Tuesday morning the APS interns all met with the APS SciCom (Science Communication) team. I didn’t know enough about SciCom to really know what to ask about, but luckily Amanda has a lot more experiecen than me so she was asking very insightful questions. Overall, I learned a lot of what it would mean to pursue a career in some kind of communications position. Then that afternoon the APS interns all met with Midhat to do a check-in. We talked about how things are going in general and what career resources APS has. That evening we went back to the same place as last week for trivia. Sadly we had to many people to compete so we were just plahing for fun, but it was definitely fun. I also had a delicious salmon burger!

Wednesday I continued to work on tagging profiles. There were some profiles that existed, but that weren’t up on the website, so now that those are up I had more to go through. That afternoon all of the iterns met on zoom with a professor with a lot of experience helping students get to the careers that they are interested in to talk about gradschool and the GRE. While the GRE isn’t really a huge factor in gradschool applications as of the last few year, he believes that studying for it is still very beneficial to your overall physics knowledge. I also met with Midhat again. We talked about my abstract and made some edits, I’m really happy with it now! That evening, I went for a run with Kaden to the mall and a group of us watched Cars 2.

On thursday, I had a meeting with a few people on the Government Affairs team at APS. Similarly to the SciCom meeting, I didn’t know what to ask, but I learned a lot about what it’s like to work in government affaris and where I can go to learn if it’s what I want to pursue. For the rest of the day I continued to work on tagging profiles. When the day was over I tried to make my way the the rock climbing gym I had been going to for a trial period I was going to start, but the metro was delayed so I had to reschedule for next week on tuesday. That evening I instead went on a run with Charlotte and worked on my economics homework. Later in the night we went to Maia’s room to help them make some whipped cream and Jadens room to play MarioKart and Just Dance. Jaden’s brother was in town so we got to meet him too which was nice.

On Friday I did more tagging and I met with Farah, who works on the Programs team, to talk about her position and what she does at APS. Most of the conversation ended up being about advice for how to more forward in my senior year and how to make the best career decisions for myself, but we did talk about her experience organizing confrences which was very interesting. Friday night, I continued working on my economics work and we went out to hang out for a little bit.

Saturday was a full day, but fairly relaxed. In the morning I went with Collins to the clmbing gym for the free admission for Global Climbing Day. Then we checked visiting a Costco off of Collin’s bucket list and enjoyed some cheap Costco food court lunch. I was planning on going back to the gym with Reidyn, but I worked on my economics homework instead. Then that evening, I played a little minecraft with some friends from highschool. They have been playing together for a couple weeks now and I haven’t had the time or energy to join them until then. Later that night, we played some more just dance and crazily enough this transitioned into a few of us having a very exisistential conversation about the future of the country.

Sunday was mostly taken up by a great trip to the beach. We left the dorms around 9:00 and spent most of the day there. Around 4:00 or 5:00 it began to rain pretty hard and there was thunder and lightening coming down, so we had to leave. A few of us stopped at an Applebees for an early dinner on the way back, so we got back at around 7:00. That evening I did even more economics work. Hopefully less of my time will be taken up by economics work after next week because I have two more weeks of class, but the final paper is due next week.

I had a great time with everyone this week and learned a lot about what career options are available to me.

Week 8: Economics Homework Has Taken Over My Life

Hello everyone!

It’s really strange that this is the 8th week of 10! Only two weeks left!

On Monday I turned in the title and abstract of my final presentation. I had been working on it with Midhat the pervious week, but submitted it that morning. Later that day, I sent the draft of December’s profile to her that morning as well. I’m hopeing to get it back by the following Monday. After work that day I helped Charlotte play a game of chess against Jaden. I hadn’t played chess in a long time, but Charlotte had never played so I was stil able to help some. Later that evening, I played minecraft with some friends from highschool. It was a ton fo fun to catch up with them over something we all enjoy. Even later the nigth I fried some papusas from Costco. They are defeintly not authentic, but still delicious.

I then continued work on Jan’s profile on Tuesday morning and got a very solid outline of what I want to talk about. That afternoon was my intro to bouldering class, so after that I went to Costco with Reidyn for some dinner. Once I was all cleaned up, I went to Jaden’s room to meet up with everyone for a celebration of Kaden being free from his worm. He had some gastrointestinal issues for the past several weeks that we had lovingly refered to as his worm, but now that he was more regular we celebrated his freedom with a cake! Maybe one of the strangeest things I’ve celebreated, but it was a great excuse to get together.

On Wedensday I continued work on Jan’s profile and had a “lunch and learn” hosted by SPS. It was an opportnity to learn about one of the jounralists that works on FYI, AIP’s science policy newsletter. Then that afternoon was suposed to be an interview with a physicist for a new profile, but some unreal circumstances forced us to cancel. After my check-in with Midhat, I did a little more work and headed home. That evening, Kaden, Charlotte, and I went for a run in the rain. It was super nice to get out and run, it had been a few weeks since the last time. Then I had to start working on some economics homework. While I have have a whole week of class after this week, I have my final paper due on Sunday along with the regular weekly homework and quiz.

Thursday was alomst completely filled with an amazing tour of NIST. I learned a lot about what NIST actually does. I knew their work was important, but I couldn’t have told you what exactly they were doing. One of the places we got to see was the forensics balistics lab where they study how the markings on fired bullets can be uesd to match a bullet to a gun. We also got to see the 1,000,000 pound dead weight that they have. I had never considered how masses that high were callibrated, but now I know! I can not overstate how cool Thursday was. (Special thanks to Jenna and Charlotte for organizing the event for us!)

Friday was a much mroe typical day than Thursday, but still productive. I read through a few profiles to try to understand why they had been taken down in the past. Then that evening a group of us went to Ben’s Chili Bowl and played a game of Catan. This was the second time I had played it recently and I lost again, but I lost way less badly than the time before. I then continued to work on my economics work and went to bed.

Saturday morning Kaden, Charlotte, and I went for a run. It may have been the longest run I’ve ever recorded at just under 6 miles. While the run was great, i really messed up my foot. I tripped twice on the same foot and my arch was extremely unhappy with me. After the run, we went to Tatte to treat ourselves to some breakfast and the rest of my day was again filled with economics, except for a few hours where a group of us went to a Nationals baseball game.

Sunday was again much more economics, but I did take a break to enjoy a wonderful Italian dinner that Jenna had prepared. It was a great break from the mind melting work of economics research. That evening, I finished my final paper and went to bed.

While the week was bogged down by school work, we all did so many fun things together!