Sunday, June 16, 2024
By:
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!
Charles Wszalek