Wednesday, August 6, 2014
By:
It has been quite the internship this year. After I had initially been hired I had no clue what to expect out of the summer, or if I was even the right person for the job. Until this summer I had not had a real "big boy" job yet, working various jobs around my hometown as a lifeguard or teaching swim lessons and as Kendra put it, this was my first "Non-water based job". So naturally I was nervous about the job itself, let alone who I was working with, living with, the people around the office, all of the typical new-guy-on-the-job stuff. As soon as work started however, all these nervous thoughts just kind of melted away and as the summer went on, I gained some valuable experience as a member, at least briefly, of the AIP community. I had also been given an opportunity to gain new knowledge on a subject that I would have otherwise not learned about, namely the history of physics, as opposed to the science of physics, which is the only part I had been exposed to until this summer. Our team was also able to break new ground on a project that will continue for a few years after we're gone from AIP. I feel like we made great progress and are at a good place for other future interns to pick up where we left off and continue our work. I'd also like to think that we set the bar at a good level with the materials that we have generated in the past weeks, but hey, nobody likes a guy who toots his own horn :) Overall this has been a great summer in which I have made new friends, made new connections, explored a new city, gained valuable new knowledge and was able to work through it all and be able to call what I did this summer a success. It was all thanks to the wonderful organizations of AIP, SPS and ΣΠΣ for allowing me the opportunity and giving me the chance to work here and prove to myself and to the world (cliché I know) what I can do as a physicist, a researcher and employee in a short time. To that I say thank you. To all.
Jacob Zalkind