Sunday, June 2, 2019
By:
My journey from Los Angeles to D.C was a long and exhausting one, but finally arriving at GWU and meeting my roommates and fellow interns made it all worth it; I knew that this summer is going to be great. Just being around physicists is great, but this internship is allowing me to be around physicists in various and exciting career paths from research, to education, to science policy, and of course outreach (which is what I’m doing).
I am the SOCK intern, which means that I get to have fun for 10 weeks, doing what I love in a great city, while surrounded by amazing mentors, peers, and friends. My job is to come up with the new SOCK that is going to be mailed out to around 100 SPS chapters to help them get started with outreach. I will also be working on general demonstrations that will go up on the SPS website. I already have so many ideas for demos and outreach activities and I hope to get as much of them done in these 10 weeks. My mentor, Brad Conrad, has been amazing with all of this so far! His energy and attitude push me to do the best work I can and prove my worthiness of this position, and I could not have asked for a better mentor.
Being in D.C. is such a privilege, and being from the opposite coast, I am determined to get the most I can out if it. That is no easy task by the way because it seems like there is always something to see or do no matter what day of the week it is. This weekend alone proves my point. Over the past two days, I’ve managed to walk around D.C. with my wonderful coworker/friend and saw all of the memorials and monuments that one person can visit in 5 hours (shout out to Jana for being an amazing guide). I also went Kayaking for the first time ever! I got to spend time with my intern friends while enjoying some jazz at the sculpture garden. And just today I helped Brad with a fun competition for the U.S physics team!
I can’t wait to learn and grow over the next 9 weeks and hopefully I’ll spread the science along the way.
Nour Ibrahim