Monday, July 30, 2018
By:
The last two weeks have felt like they have escaped from me. They have been action packed and I am still living to tell the tale. My 28th birthday fell on a Thursday and my roommate Amanda told me that the way I was celebrating was way too adult, aka working until 7 pm and not celebrating until the weekend. I guess I never felt the need to celebrate my birthday on my actual day. By having a summer birthday, I had to bring in treats for class on my half-birthday, and then if I took classes in the summer I regularly had finals on my birthday, and you probably know that finals stops for no one. I have always waited until the weekend to celebrate and this year I made sure that it was going to be a memorable one.
My roommates and I began by going to see Mamma Mia 2 on Friday evening which was just as absurd as the first one, and I loved every second of it. Then brought some weekend outdoor adventures with my roommate Amanda. On Saturday I rented a car (benefits of being 25+) and we drove to Rehoboth Beach just so we could say that we were in Delaware and take advantage of the no sales tax. Then on Sunday we went to Assateague National Seashore and kayaked to try and find the wild horses that populate the area. After about an hour of kayaking I saw a shimmer of white and I saw them! We paddled as fast as we could until we got to a point where we slowed down to not scare off the group that were grazing in the marsh lands.
There! That was it for all the extracurriculars I had planned for DC this summer. I can die happy now.
We are fast approaching the end of the internship and I have been working really hard to finish up my exhibit which has been scheduled to debut during week 9! After regularly pulling long hours to make sure all the pieces are coming together I am ready for ACP to finally see what has been oddly taking up space in random places like my cubicle, spray painting on the lawn, bubble painting in the cafeteria, melting/cutting foam on the back patio, etc.. It is all coming together!
I did have to take a break from all the preparation to go on a few tours. NASA was by far so interesting and the one I was looking forward to the most. I learned that the campus is really modelled after a university campus, and it oddly felt familiar as we walked around some of the lab places, it truly reminded me of being back in classes and I remembered that I needed to put in my order for my books for classes that are starting back up in just a month!
From the perspective of my internship, I really enjoyed that visitors center. They had a poster illustrating how the Earth’s magnetic field helps protect it from solar wind. And if you looked up you happened to see the same graph in a 3D form. I love how it’s the little details that can really make a difference and I hope that one day I can develop exhibits on a large scale regularly. But for now I am happy to have the opportunity to work on my small exhibit here, gain some insight and experience.
Kristen Larson