[520-536] In addition to managing coursework, I’ve been applying to internships. Now that I’ve been home for awhile, it’s given me time to apply. My dad is a computer science major and has helped me with resumes, and has lots of connections. So, we applied to a place […] We applied to a place last night and he had connections there. So, hopefully that one will work out, and I just need to find an apartment in a nice neighborhood and hope that this whole coronavirus thing will allow me to have a job in two months. Because if I don’t get my practicum this summer, technically you’re not allowed to graduate, because my engineering program requires that you have one internship. Your academic advisor has to meet with your employer and ask them questions about how capable a student is and their verbal communication skills, communication skills, work ethic, ability to problem solve, that kind of stuff. So, I need that before I graduate. I graduate next year, which means this is my last summer. But on the other hand, I understand that there are so many people in the same situation that the university may just have to adjust something. And it may be that my job that I get, after I graduate, they will count that as a practicum for the first two months.
Tag: internships & co-ops
[88-89; 128-134] In addition to coursework, I am an undergraduate researcher working with a professor who studies Nano-materials. The Professor is like my boss, I guess. He’s a dude who runs the whole lab, and he tells us like, hey, we’re going to work on this project, or we’re going to work on that project. But he was one of the people who went up to the national lab to do the measurements. In general, he’s the one that knows most of what he’s doing at the lab, because he’s actually a doctor. He’s actually got a doctorate. So yeah, he knows a bunch of stuff about magnetism and Nano-materials.
[96-103; 112-125] When I first started on the project, I read textbooks to try and understand what magnetism is and stuff, but since then, I’ve been working in the lab more, because the professor let me know that I understood the material good enough. Most of my role as a research assistant involves running simulations on my computer, just part of why getting a new computer was really great. Lately, I’ve been using a program called Riffle 1D that takes reflectometry data. We’re doing neutron scattering, so we’re bouncing a neutron off of a sample, and then seeing what it looks like on the other side. And that’ll get measurements from the depth of it and how far apart the things are on the sample. So, once we get the data from the reflectometry, we put it into Riffle 1D, and then we have a code that says which things will have a layer of silicon and then a layer of gadolinium and a layer of other elements. And eventually we’ll it with air at the very end. Riffle 1D does is it changes the parameters for the thing, so we’ll be like, hey, we think the silicon is an instrum tall. And then Riffle 1D will be like, hey, to make it match the reflectometry data, the silicon got to be like two instrums tall. But if what we put in originally doesn’t work with the data at all, I go through and I change it to try and see if I can get it to work at all. Yeah.
[431-433; 435-439] This research opportunity led to me receiving an internship offer to work at the national lab. The professor I work with in the lab mentioned how there was an internship at the national lab we collaborate with, the place he did the measurements, for experiments. He encouraged me to apply for the internship. I said, okay, I’ll do that. And so, I applied for it. And I got the job, the internship, the job, I’m going to be working on the same project that I’m doing here. So, I’m going to be doing it at the National lab, so I’ll be able to do some actual measurements, and not just do stuff on the computer.
[82-87; 112-118] This summer I spent a lot of time in a state in the mid-Atlantic during my internship. The internship was at a national research laboratory. It was a 12-week program where you go and you mentor underneath one of the researchers there. You work on one project over the summer. Because of my placement, I got to shoot neutron rays at these samples and see what happened to them. I got to analyze that, and it was really awesome and really cool. The people I worked were also amazing.
[163-169] Originally when I went in, I was scared of everyone including my mentor over the summer, even though I had previously talked with him. But I had never seen him face-to-face. I was like, “Oh, my god. These people are so smart and I’m going to say something dumb and they’re going to kick me out.” I mean they wouldn’t kick me out, but you get sort of terrified of that when you go into a situation like that in my opinion. But even if I asked the same question three times, they always explained it to me, which was really comforting.
[170-175] But just watching them be able to do their work, it was amazing. Even if I was helping out, it was crazy seeing how much more they could do. Originally I thought I wanted to go into industry, but just seeing how cool all of the research is, even not just this project I was on, but the projects my friends were working on, and the other projects my mentor was working on, it was amazing hearing everything about it. Just like they were all so smart and it was amazing.
[522-530] My internship was also mostly scary because one, I had never been to the state before. Two, I didn’t have my car, so I walked to work and eventually got a ride from one of my coworkers. I was scared that they would look down on me, too. Sometimes, I don’t often have a country accent, but sometimes I have a Southern accent. At one point someone pointed out that I say “iron” weird. I-R-O-N. I was also sort of scared that they would see me as dumb just because sometimes I have a Southern accent because I grew up in the South. I didn’t want to look stupid is basically the whole point. But I was scared. I just didn’t want to be stupid.
[183-192] I’m not a biology person, but half of my peers studied biology or stuff like that. And half of us were assigned to physics-based projects, which is what I was on. Even with talking with the biology-ish people about their projects, we were able to help them out like, “Hey, did you think to do this?” They would put forth good input when we were talking about problems with our projects. I still talk with them even though they’re all over the US now. We’re not together, but we still talk to each other. We have a group chat. Someone the other day posted a picture and was like, “Hey, we did this.” Because they had learned about something we had done in their class.
[197-207] At the laboratory, we all did experiments with neutrons. We all had either reflectometry or SANS, which is Small Angle Neutron Scattering data. There are certain ways that you can look at the data. I was looking at data for magnetism stuff mostly. I had learned some tips or tricks with maybe the small square to get it to show the magnetism data. One of my friends would be like, “Hi, I don’t understand what this is.” And I would be like, “Hey, that looks like the [inaudible 00:16:11] from my data. Let’s click here and see what happens.” Or sometimes it was just like, “Hey, did you think to rotate the sample?” If you hadn’t rotated it and you were wondering why you couldn’t see anything, sometimes it would just be there was a commonsense thing. Just you didn’t think of that approach.
[96-99] Then at the end of the internship, we had a really huge presentation. Getting ready for the presentation was absolutely terrifying, but I was still having a lot of fun working on it.
[211-217] For the presentation, we first had to write up I think a 300-word abstract. I remember everyone, at least in the room I was in, we all wrote up our abstracts and sent it to each other on Google Docs. We went through and we edited each other’s abstract. Someone would realize that you had a grammar error, and someone would be like, “This isn’t what the definition of this word is.” We all went through and we tried to make each other’s abstracts as good as they could be.
[218-224] Then the presentations, they were PowerPoint presentations. We, at least in the room I was in, we practiced our presentations with each other. While we were making the presentations, I could lean over to the person next to me and be like, “Hey, how does this look?” And they’d be like, “Hey, you need to move the picture. It’s too big.” Or something like that. We were just trying to make sure that everyone’s looked as good as it could, so we would all look good because we would all have amazing presentations.
[225-228] Then, when we were practicing our presentations, they would help with being like, “Hey, I don’t understand what this is. You need to explain this more.” Or, “Hey, you’re going way too fast. Breathe. Slow down. You have 15 minutes and you need to fill it.” We just supported each other.
[153-157] It was only that project that I did my presentation over. There were a bunch of scientists and people there watching and that’s what was so stressful because they were all really smart people with doctorates, or they were post-docs and stuff like that.
[514-521; 99] During my presentation, I was terrified that they would ask me a simple question and I would completely blank out. They may ask what’s a cell? And I’ll be like, “Oh, my god. What is a cell?” I was just sort of terrified of forgetting something simple and fundamental and looking like an idiot in front of all of these professional people. I wasn’t so scared that they would ask me a really complicated, in-depth question that I would forget. I felt like you would be more excused if you’re like, “Yeah, sorry. I’m an undergrad. I don’t know.” But I was just scared I would forget something simple. There was relief after the presentation. Ah, it’s done.
[590-594] Overall, my experience at the research laboratory and experiencing the research made me want to do research more in life before I went there. I definitely have been considering doing research for a job. Designing something… designing it, researching it, testing it, writing a paper on it. That’s more of what I want to do now. It was so enjoyable.
[584-587] It was less engineering at the research laboratory than more research. Yeah, sure people had engineering degrees, but they were doing science and research. I don’t feel like I earned an engineering star and a pat on the back. It’s more like a research star and a pat on the back.
[232-237] However, transitioning back to school was miserable because I had three days between when I finished my internship to move into my apartment. Then school started. It was just stressful trying to get all of my furniture moved in, and then unpacked and everything cleaned. And making sure I had paper and pencils and stuff for school. There just wasn’t enough time. If I had had a couple more days, it wouldn’t have been as miserable.