Sunday, June 5, 2022
By:
Before writing anything, I want to mention that I am currently writing this blog post while sitting on the edge of the Lincoln memorial with two other interns, watching the sunset. That in itself is pretty wild and awesome… and it might be the reason for a slightly disorderly blog post. This isn’t as much as a day-by-day, and more of a highlight reel of the past week and how grateful I am to be a part of this experience!
I will be honest... I'm here because I quite literally flipped a coin. I will describe more about that later, but I'm thrilled that the coin has gotten me to where I am now (and I'm sure the other physics interns could tell you all about the probability of my coin-flip).
In regard to my job so far, I will explain more what my role and project is in next weeks blog post! My job is essentially to research and amplify underrepresented voices in physics history-- which is an essential mission that I am thrilled to be a part of. I will be writing lesson plans in the first half of the summer, and using what I learned in that first half to then work on outreach to expand education and awareness of the physicists that I researched. I am planning on making these teaching guides for primarily elementary school students, because I believe that it is abolutely essential that kids learn that any minority can be in any field from a young age. It is important for kids to be able to relate to any discipline, hopefully seeing someone like themselves doing anything that they may want in their lives. I am going to focus my projects on women in physics, and started out with meeting my mentors and beginning to research who I may want to study this week!
It has been an absolute blast getting to know the other interns in the week of movie nights, exploring, baking cookies, and getting acclimated to my new position and hybrid work schedule... andalso experiencing exactly what a drag brunch is (amazing). I went on the first plane flight of my life to get here, so one could say that everything is new to me.
First, my roommate and I are honestly perfect. Our door has already turned into a scrapbook of door tags, and both of us sacrificed bringing essential items on our flights here in order to bring a Nutribullet and a projector... needless to say, we are similar in all the best ways and are having a wonderful time. We also have already started a small business. Check Janessa Slone’s blog post for more explanation and perhapse a word of what this post's title is :)
The day of move-in (Sunday), I decided to go for a run to acclimate myself with the surroundings—when I left, I neither checked the time and nor realized that the sun was setting... so it was a giddy surprise to accidentally stumble upon the Lincoln memorial and the national mall during a stunning sunset right at the end of my street. It was honestly a truly magical moment by myself to be able to really learn my closeness to the rest of the city.
The first full day together with some the interns was Memorial Day and it was an amazing occasion to get to know some of the other interns and be able to navigate the city (despite my complete lack of experience coming from living next to farms in MA and NH). The activity and life of the city is thrilling and wonderful—I have really enjoyed the independence, liveliness, and confidence that the surroundings bring.
The next day we had orientation where we met the staff and our mentors at ACP—everyone is wonderful, kind, and excited to help us and contribute to both our personal and professional growth. I really cannot emphasize how lucky I feel to have such wonderful role-models around me; every single person at ACP/AIP/SPS/AAPT (there are literally more acronyms than this) that I have met thus far has gone out of their way to reach out with a friendly chat, genuine interest, and contact information in case I should need it. It is because of this that I am thrilled to be able to work with my mentors—they are some truly passionate and genuine people. I already know that we are going to get along great, as we have so many overlapping interests and beliefs and they are so genuine and casual. My position centers around researching underrepresented voices in physics; amplifying underrepresented voices and the movement around doing so is extremely important to me, and I am thrilled to be able to explore this passion more in tandem with physics in this internship.
Now, back to why I flipped a coin to be here: when deciding on what I was going to do this summer, I was paralyzed with indecision (not to be dramatic). I was lucky enough to have been accepted into three internships: this physics history program in DC and two technical astrophysics projects in Boulder, CO and Socorro, NM. I have only ever imagined myself pursuing the 'hard physics' side of astronomy, and it is essentially the only kind of research that I have performed up to this point. It is this passion for astronomy that has made my choice to come to DC for history/policy instead of traveling west for astrophysics one of the most terrifying decisions of my life. I essentially decided to ignore the internships that I know would have been essential steppingstones into the future that I have always expected for myself, and instead chose an internship in something new. I know my decision will not make me as competitive as an applicant for astrophysics-specific graduate school, may have been my only opportunity to do in-person space science research, and I can't help but get the sense that I have changed the course of my career aspirations. I came to the terrifying conclusion that space science may not be what I truly want; I don't want to be a professor or live in a remote area for my work, and I realized that maintaining a better work-life balance than most 'hard-physics' scientists hold is more important to me than studying what I am most passionate about. So—I suppose that I have this internship to thank for making me reevaluate my goals and reorder my passions from astrophysics to applying my passion for researching and spreading awareness of underrepresented minorities, particularly in STEM where they can so often be diminished.
Thank you for reading my ramblings that turned out to be way too long—and thanks so much to the incredibly patient mentors and SPS leadership that are making this possible! I can't express how grateful and thrilled I am to be where I am, doing the work that I'm doing, with the wonderful people around me.
Emma Goulet