Week 7: Guess I’m a library geek now

Friday, July 19, 2019

By:

Catherine Ryan

Welp, it's Friday of week 8 and I still haven’t posted about week 7. Not that I didn’t try it was just a very big week. We visited Capitol Hill and NASA last week. What more could a science policy nerd like myself love more? I have also realized because of this internship, I get excited about libraries. This internship has allowed me to explore and learn about the interesting and odd materials you can find on the shelves in a library. My excitement comes from the thrill of what I can learn in the library. And that thrill to learn is what also powers my love for physics, so it all comes back to me being a big nerd. On Tuesday, during our Capitol Hill tour, we took a little detour and visited the Library of Congress. I got my readers card and was able to explore the library from a few minutes. I found an interesting book about colonial public education/schools. The reading room at the Library of Congress is beautiful and I highly encourage you to visit. On Thursday, we visited NASA, luckily for us, a jamboree was the same day. Lots of the research groups had tables set up and were giving little talks. The library and archives even had a table. I stopped by to ask their archivist about some materials I’m looking to put in my final presentation. They were very kind and were interested in my research.

At work, it was kind of difficult to get very far in my projects since we only have three days of work again. I did get all the blurbs done for the black hole exhibit. The blurbs just needed a read through by someone else. I collected all the images I need for the black hole exhibits. 

This weekend I took a break from my current city life and went back to Happy Valley for the annual art festival. I drove up with my friend Chad, who by coincidence is Nolan’s office buddy at NASA. Crazy how small the world gets when you go to one of the largest universities on the east coast. We got almost too excited to see all the trees and mountains. Life out in central PA moves slower than DC and it was a nice little break from the busy, hot, and humid city.

 

Catherine Ryan