Tuesday, August 8, 2023
By:
Week 10:
This blog comes to you from a train in Canada! I live in DC, and went on vacation with my mom and sister. So while I’ve been a bit busy since the internship ended last Friday, this blog will travel back to last week.
Monday was my penultimate day in the office. It was slow because it was an out of session Monday, but I did a lot of work on my presentation because I’d had absolutely no time the week before. My sister actually came and visited me on Capitol Hill (my family lives just a metro ride away) and I gave her a tour of the Capitol! Elizabeth, the Legislative Intern for the Committee, came with me because neither of us had too much work to do. She had worked in a Member office previously, and pitched in with some fun facts that she learned while doing so – including a spot where a cat had stepped in wet concrete during construction. My favorite room along the tour route (and my sister agreed) is the old Supreme Court Chamber, where some of the early formative cases that defined US history were fought, including Marbury v. Madison and Dred Scott. I love Constitutional Law and theory, and I’d been a little lost in the grandeur and mythos of the Supreme Court for a long time. Though I wish I could return to that mindset now, the Court definitely has a long way to go to regain my trust and the trust of the American people. Here’s hoping! I said goodbye to my sister after walking her through the tunnels to the Committee hearing rooms, wrapped up for the day, and headed home a bit early, where I ended up on the same train as Janessa once she got on after Metro Center. I stayed in, made a delicious dinner, and finished up my presentation.
Tuesday was my remote day, but with nothing to do while I wasn’t in the office, I had finally been able to plan a lunch with John Mather to make up for the time I missed meeting him due to the AI hearing. I met up with him in College Park, and lunch was a personal conversation so I don’t know if I’m going to share everything we talked about here, but it was amazing and I was emotionally crying by the time I left to get back to DC. We discussed Oppenheimer and how Dr. Mather felt about his personal scientific legacy and the national security reality behind how all scientific research gets funded, representation of minorities in physics, teaching, the future, and a lot of other things. Most of all, John Mather is one of the most caring, most genuine people I have ever met and I’m so grateful to have a relationship with him going forward.
Wednesday was my last day at the United States House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and I did actually cry on Wednesday. I was at the front desk for my last day, and answered some phone calls and worked on my presentation for a bit longer before walking over to the Capitol through the House tunnels one last time for a resume workshop. It was pretty useful! I’m definitely going to take some of the advice they gave me. I spent a little more time wandering around the Capitol and just taking it all in once I finished getting the way I present my life examined, just appreciating the space I got to spend the summer in. I didn’t get anything done after I got back to Ford except for chatting with the few members of the Committee staff in the office for the day: Alan, Albert, Connor. They’re some of my favorite staffers though, and I’m glad I got to spend my last day with them. Alan gave me his favorite NASA pin (after showing me all the ones he had and didn’t like) which is definitely what started the crying. After my lunch with John Mather the day before and saying long-form goodbyes to Albert and Alan, I was just filled with such intense gratitude I felt buoyant. All of them really do their best to help create the world they wish they could see, a world that’s better for all the people in it, and they want to help me do the same. I really truly don’t have the vocabulary to describe how it felt physically in my body but I am so lucky that I had this experience and met all of these incredible people. Although – one of the things I’ve found myself more commonly believing now is that while I was definitely very lucky, I also got what I did out of the internship because I worked really hard both to get there in the first place, and then while I was there. I really did advocate for myself and take advantage of all the opportunities in front of me. And the last one for Wednesday was this: going to the wharf with a bunch of people for Rock the Dock and playing giant Jenga and cornhole and laughing and just getting to be. I felt full in more ways than one.
Thursday meant rehearsal day. It was honestly incredible to learn what everyone else was doing after just hearing snippets and pieces for the whole summer. It was fun getting to ask people questions about their work and research as well, and I left the rehearsal feeling prepared and excited to see the rest of everyone’s presentations on Friday. Before we left for the day, we celebrated Brad’s birthday and… also learned that he was leaving SPS to do STEM education work at NIST. I can’t believe I thought Brad R. Conrad was a stuffy old man for so long before finally meeting him and now I won’t get emails from him anymore, but I hope everything works out for the best at NIST. Thursday was also the day that Heartstopper season 2 finally premiered and Jenna and I were absolutely freaking out. We watched the first episode, internally and sometimes externally screaming the whole time, before I packed up allll the stuff in my room. My dad was picking up everything around 20:00 because no one would be able to get it on Friday, and I got to watch the walls go bare and the drawers empty as I packed my things into suitcases. Most of the interns went back to Tonic for dinner as a full circle moment because we’d also gone the first day we were all together. It was delicious and bittersweet, and there was a lot of laughter and maybe someone scrawled “We love Brad” in crayon on the ceiling next to a bunch of frats letting you know they were there. Though Jenna and I had decided we were going to hang out with everyone Thursday night and not watch any more Heartstopper, people were mostly packing by themselves and after my dad picked up my stuff we watched four more episodes. Would completely recommend.
Friday was it. We had a delicious breakfast and Kayla, Mikayla, and Brad gave everyone a personalized and inscribed book as a parting gift. We all decided to sign the books for each other and I’m so grateful we did. Then people’s mentors and families slowly started trickling into the room and then it was time for presentations. I’m so so proud of everyone. I really don’t have other words to say except that we all did really incredible work this summer. As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about science communication, I’m also so proud of the way that everyone spoke about their work or research and I can’t wait to see where everyone goes next. No one really knew what to do once the presentations were over – we ate lunch and said our goodbyes and slowly trickled back to the dorms. I was actually the first one to leave because I had to be home Friday night, and a bunch of people came down to wish me goodbye.
I’ve said it throughout each and every blog and I’ll write it out in full again here: I am so incredibly grateful for the people I worked with, the friends I made, John Mather, and Kayla, Mikayla, and Brad. I’m grateful to the physics community overall for supporting the new physicists in these wonderful ways, and though I usually roll my eyes at people saying that they “had a life changing experience over their summer break omg!” I will honestly say that I did. Thank you so much to everyone who made this internship possible. As I was debriefing from my lunch on Tuesday with one of my friends and fangirling that John Mather wanted to keep in touch with me, he said “he wants to keep in touch with you because while he is a person who has done and is doing great things, we’re the next generation of people who are going to do great things”. We are – I write this line as a promise to myself – we are.
Ruthie Vogel