Week 9: Lunch and Learns!

This week we had two Lunch and Learns! The first was with Dr. Renee Horton from NASA. Dr. Renee is an inspiring scientist who has worked at NASA for 13 years, has a kids book series called Dr. H Explores the Universe, created a nonprofit calledUnapologetically Being Inc (UBI) which partners with communities around the world to support marginalized students in following passions in STEM careers through mentoring, and so much more. I am really inspired by her speech and I am so thankful she made time to talk with us. Thank you, Dr. Renee Horton!

Our second Lunch and Learn of the week was by Midhat Farooq from the American Physical Society (APS) on resume building. She gave us a lot of tools and resources to build a skills-based resume. It helped me see how companies view resumes and what I should be incorporating to get a better chance at receiving an interview. Thank you, Midhat, for taking time to talk with us; it was helpful!

This week has been a busy work week with our final presentations swiftly approaching. I like presenting and I think it will be great practice for future presentations and extra preparation for when we present at conferences/meetings this winter (because SPS will fund us in attending a conference/meeting this upcoming year). I will hopefully be going to the 2022 Physics Conference (PhysCon) this winter and I’m looking forward to it. I am so thankful to SPS for organizing talks (like with Dr. Renee Horton and Midhat) on professional development, teaching us about resources, and encouraging us to attend conferences and other SPS meetings.

At work I have been inputting all the data I collected this summer into tables which are then made into graphs. These graphs will be on APSs Education and Diversity website. The graphs show national averages and other statistics on degrees granted at Bachelors, Masters, and PhD levels across demographics (race and gender) in the US. The data is often used by schools to see how their school is doing, by staff in grant proposals, and by students and professors in papers to analyze where there are gaps in higher education in the US.

I also got some awesome space posters to upgrade my desk from Brad Conrad - thank you Brad!

After work this Thursday we went to the Wharf to see a scary movie. The scariest part was when a storm rolled in and had us all running for cover under the tents. Luckily storms only last about 20 minutes here and there was no lightning, so we waited it out and then continued watching! Thank you to ‘District Wharf’ for funding and organizing free public movies.