This week started out pretty well again. I feel like keep repeating that starting line over and over again in these blogs, but that can only be a good thing since it shows how well the summer is going. Now after acknowledging that the week as a whole was good and Monday in particular was amazing for reasons I will get to. The fact that we weren’t able to get the day before or after Independence day off sucked. So with that little rant over back to the main topic.
Monday started with a meeting with Yuen my mentor for me. It was just for us to go over what she expected me to get done during the week. The main reason she made this one so early was because the NSF interns were taking a trip to the Capitol that day. Looking back I can now see why we didn’t just meet there to begin with rather than going to the NSF first and then heading to the Capitol. I agreed with others about it being needlessly expensive to make both trips when heading straight to the Capitol was so much faster. However looking back now I can see that there was no way everyone that wanted to go would be there on time making the meetup needlessly complicated. Something I should have immediately realized given my personal issues with punctuality.
The first thing we did after arriving was to meet with Sherrie’s contact there Kathryn Sullivan. She worked for Senator Jon Tester from Montana. She took us to have lunch since it was already noon at this point. Then she took us to the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee room for a briefing. The briefing revolved around her over 30 year career working for different offices and agencies within the federal government which included working for Vice President Al Gore. After this we went to find our tour guides. We were then split into 2 groups of 7 and 6 respectively and went through the tour.
After the tour ended I rushed over to a nearby bar to watch the ending of a World Cup round of 16 match between Japan and Belgium before heading home. On Tuesday I went in and just started working on Tableau. I did this throughout the day while looking forward to a night out since we didn’t have to work Wednesday. When I finished at the NSF I went to get a haircut, which turned out great. The main problem was that even with my appointment I ended up having to wait over almost an hour for my turn. I kinda blame this for the fatigue I felt once I got home because I couldn’t muster the will to leave the apartment that night.
Wednesday began very slowly for me. There was no World Cup matches that day so I spent a number of hours just playing video games. Eventually we all got ready and went to the bbq at Dr. Toldson’s house. I was looking forward to the food for this event and planned to leave relatively early to go bar hopping. However I ended up enjoying myself so much that I just couldn’t bring myself to leave early. This translated to my roommates and I being the last guests to leave, which lead to the bonus of chicken, burgers, and mac and cheese coming home with us.
Thursday was basically the same as Tuesday for me in that nothing really happened. I didn’t really accomplish anything since I spent most of the day just working on Tableau. I did get some definite directions from Yuen for what to do in Tableau, but I wasn’t able to accomplish them that day.
Friday was a very eventful day for me. I was able to finish one of the assignments in Tableau. I think I finished the other as well, but I’m not certain of that and will wait for confirmation from Yuen Monday. Along with that we also had a lunch meeting with some of the AAAS fellows and while none were in my field specifically it was very interesting to hear about their experiences. I also asked for general advice from them and for names of people that they thought I should talk to. Finally along with all that I was able to watch some matches while getting my work done and France and Belgium both of whom I was supporting got through the Quarter finals and will meet each other in the Semis. That night I just went home and relaxed with some beer.
Saturday was all about the other 2 World Cup matches until about 4 pm when I again drank some beer, played video games and watched movies on netflix all night. After these 2 exciting evenings at home I finally left the apartment sunday to go play soccer in Columbia Heights with my brother and his team. Unfortunately we lost 4-2 and I wasn’t as helpful as I should have been.
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