Sunday, July 31, 2022
By:
Second to last blog post.
On Monday, the SPS Interns met over zoom with Dr. Renee Horton. She has an amazing and motivational bright spirit and had great advice for all of us. I am super excited to meet her in person at Physcon later this year.
Later in the day, I had a timed ticket to visit the Holocaust Museum. It was very heavy and quite emotional as you would expect. The layout of the museum was interesting and basically just a huge timeline. If you ever get the chance to go, definitely allot about an hour and half to go through each exhibit.
Tuesday at work, I finished packing the SOCK boxes with blue shredded paper. I then added some of the materials that were ready to go into a couple of the boxes. I also filmed another demo video, but unfortunately, I didn’t like how it turned out. I may or may not refilm it, but right now my focus is on other things as the internship closes out.
The next D&D session continued later that night, which is the second to last one before we end our time here. It ended with my character in treacherous waters, and hopefully a huge advantage for the others. Justin usually plays background music to match with the story line and Michael Jackson’s Thriller came on so it was expected that we bust out the dance.
Wednesday was a very long day at work. I finished some more boxes and printed out some more papers. I don’t want to get too into detail about the SOCK, so using the word ‘some’ will have to do for now. I also built one of the demos that is included in the box, and it works perfectly! Toward the end of the work day, I added the ‘SOCK Documents’ folder to 80 thumb drives. This was so tiring and a lot of repetition for a 2 hour period.
The interns then had a ‘Breakfast for Dinner’ potluck where each dish showed up and showed out! Everything was amazing as always.
Thursday morning I practiced my presentation in front of Brad and Mikayla, and they helped me make changes and gave me some advice on presenting. Honestly, after the practice, I was a little more nervous so we planned another practice talk for the next day. The rest of the work day was uploading videos to social platforms. Check out @spsnational on TikTok!
Thursday night a group of us went to the Wharf which is actually such a great place to hang out. We got Shake Shack and then went to a movie event sponsored by Pacifico.
A quarter of the way through The Goonies, it started storming. The way the audience got up so quickly was hilarious. We all ran under some tents and a few brave souls stayed to embrace the rain and enjoyed the movie. I ended up underneath a small pizza shop to stay warm, then eventually rejoined the group. We left a little after the rain stopped and enjoyed relaxing the rest of the night.
The SPS team all came to ACP on Friday and it was nice seeing everyone. I had a meeting with the new Zone 16 Zone Councilor, Dwight Luhman, who is at Sandia National Lab. He is amazing and we have really high hopes for Zone 16 this year.
I had another practice with Brad, and felt a little stronger about my presentation. The new packaging tape and the stickers for the SOCKs came in and they look great! I found out that I missed one important document on the thumb drives, so I had to add it to every single one. This time it took me around 20 minutes–which is DRASTICALLY different than the first time. After this, I was finally able to pack and finish the SOCK boxes, which was so relieving. They look so amazing, and the full theme and components will be in my next blog post :). Friday night all of the interns got together and played Jackbox and did some karaoke.
Saturday morning I found an amazing bagel sandwich place that is about a 5 minute walk from the dorm. I got a breakfast sandwich and enjoyed it at a table on the GW Campus. Later on, Emma, Taylor, and I went to the Smithsonian visitor center where Saksham met up with us.
It was a super hot day, but we enjoyed walking through various museums. My favorite was the Modern Art Museum. I visited this last year in September but it wasn’t quite finished yet. It was so breathtaking and emotional and scary and so many other things in just the hour that we were there. We also went to the sculpture garden where we wrote wishes on a tag and tied them to a tree. A lot of the ones we read were so sweet, and some were really funny.
Afterward, we headed home and Emma and I enjoyed watching Ice Age and welcomed the interns back to our room for our last Saturday together.
The end of our internship is coming to an end, and I’m so excited for everyone to see the SOCK.
Janessa Slone