Monday, July 11, 2016
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The 4th of July was on Monday, making last weekend a long one! Pre-Independence Day, Vanessa and I went shopping, to dinner and out for gelato. Sunday’s weather was gray with scattered rain showers, but that didn’t stop me from going to the United States Botanic Garden in the afternoon or out with Tabitha and Vanessa that night.
The showers on Sunday were a just preview of the rain we were going to have on the Fourth. Tabitha, Jose, Vanessa and I ventured into the rain to the other WISH housing location for free ice cream. Then we did some shopping at Union Station. Tabitha and I tried to go to the National Archives but, in true scientist fashion, decided against it after observing and testing the slow-moving line. Instead, we went to the National Postal Museum, which was unexpectedly awesome. We met up with Dahlia and her friend from home at the museum and the four of us ate dinner at a great pizza place, where we hung out until it was time to go to the National Mall to watch the fireworks. We were all a bit soggy, but I had a great time!
The work week was less exciting. Samantha, the two AIP History graduate students and I are revising about 40 teaching guides for a third and final time. We spent a good chunk of Wednesday working through nitty-gritty details of font sizes and spacing so that our lesson plans will all be in the same format. It’s a bit tedious, but I know we’re going to be glad for it when we publish these lesson plans free of spelling errors and uniformly formatted.
Thursday was a short day at work because us SPS Interns at ACP had to get ready for the Women’s Policy, Inc STEM Fair. We had a couple demonstrations related to light running on the AIP table at the fair. We used these demonstrations to teach participants about spectroscopy and how to use diffraction glasses to tell the different between incandescent, compact florescent and LED lights. I didn’t spend too much time running the demonstrations, instead spending most of the night networking. I had successful conversations with women from Girls, Inc, the Society of Women Engineers, and the National Institute of Health’s Office of Research on Women’s Health, all of which ended in an exchange of business cards and follow up emails.
At ACP on Friday, the AIP History interns had a meeting with the web design team. We explained our ideas for the design of the teaching guides’ website and set some timeline goals.
My parents came to visit this weekend and I stayed with them in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia on Friday and Saturday nights. More on that in my next blog post!
Victoria DiTomasso