Monday, July 15, 2019
By:
This blog post will now come to order.
This week was a rather exciting week here in DC, as we interns got tours of both Capitol Hill and NASA Goddard! I’ve been to Capitol Hill before for two different House Science hearings, but the tour we got was a whole new experience. For starters, we got a detailed tour of the Capitol Building by Mather intern Gia who showed us old Senate and Supreme Court rooms, the current House gallery, and lots of beautiful artwork and sculptures. We also made our way to the Library of Congress, and we ended the day by sitting down with Bill Foster, the only PhD physicist in Congress! He gave us a unique perspective on the intersection between science and politics, and emphasized the need for well-informed scientists. He was a relatable and down-to-Earth person, but also so intelligent, informative, and insightful. I’m grateful for the experience to be able to meet and talk to him. Following our meeting with Dr. Foster, a small group of us went to check out the office of Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, each leaving a post-it note on her wall of letters.
The NASA tour was on Thursday which included tours of several labs. We got to see where both Terry and Nolan work, and we got to meet their mentors and lab mates. My favorite part of the day was an event called the “Science Jamboree” in which dozens of NASA groups lined the hallways of a building with tables and talked about their research and gave demos. I was really interested in the different climate initiatives going on at NASA, and I got to hear a lot about their current climate modeling efforts. I feel like when people think about NASA they just think about rocket science, but it was eye-opening to see the variety of types of research being done at Goddard.
On Friday I went to a Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee Meeting for the beginning of the day, and watched and took notes on a House Science hearing on glaciers later in the day. I’m hopefully going to be writing a bulletin on the hearing and current efforts and policy related to threats posed by melting sea ice. I’m really excited! The research I will be doing in graduate school is related to sea ice, so this bulletin is very much up my alley.
I’ve been feeling a bit homesick, so I booked an Amtrak ticket for Friday night and spent the weekend home. I’m actually on the train coming back to DC right now. It was a great weekend catching up with friends, my parents, siblings, and grandparents. My best friend Elizabeth’s birthday was this past Wednesday, so the highlight of my weekend was being able to take her out to dinner and catch up with her. I missed her a lot! I also got to enjoy a New Jersey bagel which was well-overdue. Boy have I missed the good ol’ pork roll, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel. Hopefully this weekend will hold over my bagel habits for another three weeks!
PS- If you haven't noticed, the majority of the photos attached to my blog posts are not oriented correctly. Despite being a physicist, this seems to be a problem I haven't been able to solve...yet.
Samantha Staskiewicz