Week Eight: NIST, NASA, and No-Hitters

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

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

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

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

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