Friday, August 9, 2013
By:
This week has been very busy and very bittersweet! On Monday all the interns gathered at ACP to go through our presentations and see how we could improve them before the symposium on Tuesday. It was a bit daunting but so helpful to get everyone’s advice and suggestions. That night we went out to eat together for the last time as the (almost) complete group of SPS interns and realised that this summer had come to an end a lot quicker than any of us had expected!
Tuesday morning was our presentations and it was great to see everyone’s friends, family, and colleagues interested in what we’ve been working on over the summer. I was able to present near the start so that I could relax and listen properly to everyone else’s. Everyone has been working on such interesting things over a huge range of fields and I loved finding out about all the projects as I realised that up until now, I’d just been hearing tiny snapshots of their work. I also really enjoyed talking to people afterwards about the work I’ve been doing over the past two months. Our schedule for this week was jam packed and after a quick lunch, we were off on our tour of the State Department. We had the opportunity to listen to three people who all had physics backgrounds but now worked in the State Department. It all seems to prove that you really can do anything with a degree in physics!
On Wednesday we all gathered at ACP and had breakfast and worked on thank you notes for the people we’ve met over the summer, as well as saying goodbye to everyone who’s helped us, either specifically with our work or in general. After the interns who worked in the building organised a tour of a few of the areas we’d been working in, we went our separate ways as people began to gradually leave over the next couple of days. After heading back to the dorms that night, those of us that were still around went out for one last (amazing) burger in Georgetown and spent the night just hanging out and packing and (in my case) trying to figure out why I had so much more stuff than when I arrived and how I was going to fit it all in my suitcase! On Thursday night, I flew back to London and was very excited to find that the weather was about 30 degrees colder than DC and that I could say goodbye to the humidity, the one thing I won’t miss!
This whole summer has been an amazing experience and I’d like to say thanks again to everyone at AIP and SPS as well as all the other interns.
Fiona Muir