Week 5: Swimming with Ducks

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Wednesday, July 5, 2023

By:

Brynn Schierenbeck

Hate to be late again, but all good things come to those who wait, right?

This week was a complete blur. I flew back home early Tuesday morning and spent the rest of the day doing some work. Later that night, Gizem, Tiffany, Colin, Clay and I went to a “open mic comedy show bingo”. For those unfamiliar, each comedian signs up and gets about five minutes to do their thing while the crowd marks down any sort of cliches they might say such as “so how’s everyone doing tonight?”. I had a blast and have to say the comedy scene in DC has got to be one of my favorite things about the city. 

Wednesday I went into ACP and worked on an article I’m writing about my experimental observations thus far. It’s still very much in the works so I’m not gonna dive into it yet. Once I got back, I had to rush to make it to the dock on time so I could join our group for paddle-boarding. This was the highlight of my week. We spent a good hour and a half out on the Potomac just cruising around. At one point, a family of ducklings got within two feet of me and Devin! All in all, it was a very wholesome experience. 

Thursday consisted of drafting an article and creating edible silly putty out of yogurt and cornstarch. My assignment for the week was to brainstorm ideas on how to make the concept of viscoelasticity ( when a material shows both solid and fluid-like behavior to some extent) easily understandable through food. Silly putty is one of the most common applications of this so I tried to find a food as close as I could get. I’m not saying you should eat the concoction I made but hypothetically you could! 

Friday, Ruthie gave us a tour of the Capitol! We got to tag along with her as she gave us a run down of what she does on a day-to-day basis. Go check out her blog for more details on her job it’s extremely interesting! Gizem and I met up with a few friends down at the waterfront in Georgetown. We had a great dinner and came back to meet up with the interns for what me and Devin like to call some good old-fashioned shenanigans:) This continued into Saturday where many of us ( all 21+) joined in on a Fourth of July bar-crawl. Let me tell you, DC doesn’t joke around when it comes to America’s birthday.

Sunday was much more relaxed. I finished up my first draft of my article and walked over to Georgetown to sit and journal by the water. It was nice to have some alone time and just reflect on the week’s activities. I suppose I probably should have just written this post there but oh well. 

It is now Wednesday and we already celebrated and watched the fireworks. I want to keep all of the timelines correct though so come back next week for an obscene amount of low-quality pictures!

Brynn Schierenbeck