Week 10

Week 10 began with me feeling exhausted. This was the beginning of the final week of the internship. First though I needed to complete the funding data on my table. Monday was a very straightforward day in that I was working on just the funding table the whole time. At the end of the day I went home pretty late and slept almost immediately.

Tuesday was the final day before our presentations. By this point I had finished inputting the funding data and also had an extra table done. However looking at everything I wasn’t satisfied with what I had. So I decided to do a bit more work.

That night I went home late and kept working until about 11 pm to get the data in for my tables. I was finally prepared for the presentation. The morning of the presentation I came in there fully prepared. As the presentations started there was a relatively large crowd in the room. I was set to be the fifth presenter and was going over my presentation one last time when I noticed a major problem. One of my slides would not scroll all the way to the right meaning that there were three tables that I couldn’t show people.

So with my nerve levels going through the roof I began my own presentation. I’m told that the presentation went really well, but I felt disappointed overall. I stammered a few times and kept saying uhm a lot. With all of this I still got through the presentations. Afterwards I was now completely finished work wise with the NSF. I spoke to a few of the team members in IIP before heading home for a very satisfying nap.

On thursday I went into the office relatively early. This was to be my last day and there was a bit of paperwork I needed to get done before the closing ceremony. After both things were done I went home. Friday we needed to wake up early and go to QEM to fill out some final paperwork and stuff before the weekend. This was the last time we would be together as a group and so after many goodbyes we all left.       

Week 9

Week 9 was a very busy week for me. The whole week was based around getting ready for my presentation that was a week away. Monday spent working the whole time. I stayed in the office until about 7pm that night before going home. Part of why I stayed so late was because I was getting work done on my second dashboard.  On Tuesday there was more of the same, during the work there was a bit of a break to have a meeting with my mentor Yuen. This was where I showed her the completed version of my first dashboard. Afterwards we discussed my second dashboard. This led to me realizing that most of the work I did on Monday would be useless for my presentation.

So now with a clear direction for my second dashboard I spent all my time on Tuesday and Wednesday working on inputting the data needed for that second dashboard. At this point I needed to put in all the financial information for research centers from 1998-2017. Thursday was interesting for a number of reasons, but mainly because it offered a very different experience for the day than the week before. There was a meeting with Yuen that morning to go over my work. Unfortunately all I could say was that I had made progress on the work. Then there was the final professional development meeting with the NSF. This one was concentrated on how to give a proper presentation. Then I also needed to leave the building early. This was for the Podcast assignment that we were doing that night at QEM. I would be doing the podcast with Star and Talei, this would basically be a discussion about the overall internship experience. It would also be my first time participating in a podcast.

The podcast went amazing that night. An hour into it and we still had a number of things that we could still talk about. I feel like the conversation was very informative and interesting especially if the listener wanted to participate in the QEM internship.

Friday was all about getting my Final Report done. I should have been working on it throughout the week, but I felt that the presentation work should take priority. I spent the whole day working on this paper. There were a number other things happening that day like meeting with AAAS fellows to get advice on using certain features on Tableau. Meeting with some Program Directors to show off my work so far and get general advice. Some people were also taking trips and wouldn’t be back before the next thursday and so I wouldn’t see them again. I also made sure to get myself added to some mailing list through my personal email so that I would be able to participate in some site visits that I knew would be coming in the next few months. With all of this being done that day I didn’t finish the report before going home. However I decided that I would leave my laptop until it was done. Since I then allowed my phone to distract me for hours at a time from then on I didn’t finish the report until close to 2 am.

Normally this late bedtime on a friday wouldn’t matter but there was a panel that the computer science interns at QEM were participating in at the BWI Airport stop on the Marc train. This meant an early morning wake up. Unfortunately we were all feeling very sluggish that morning and missed the train we were aiming for. This led to an hour of sitting around Union Station. Fortunately leaving at 10 am instead of 9 didn’t hurt us since we weren’t going to be on the panel till noon.

The Forum on Building Research and Education Capacity in Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) had been going on since the day before with professors from all over there to participate. This included Dr. Langdon a professor I’ve had multiple times and who wrote my recommendation for this internship. I made sure to tell her all about my experiences so far and got some lunch before the panel. The panel itself was very interesting. We answered questions about our experience so far at HBCUs and what we thought should change there. At one point it turned into the professors giving us life advice which was interesting, but very much off topic. This also caused a few laughs when the mediator had to stop it. Afterwards we talked to some professors from Florida A&M and a few other institutions. I also met another professor from Bowie State that I had heard of but never met. He ran a Virtual Reality lab on campus and asked me about joining his class and possibly working in his lab as well.

After we finished networking we tried to rush back to DC. Unfortunately the next train didn’t arrive for at least another ninety minutes, so rather than wait I proposed we take a taxi to my house and from there I get the other interns to the nearby metro station. This worked out well.

After dropping them off my mom then took me to my mechanic’s garage to pick up my car. Sadly he didn’t do  a great job because after shutting off the engine when I got home the car would start again as I found out thirty minutes later when I tried. So annoyed I decided to spend the night there. This also allowed me to get help from my cousin on some of my work.