I’m officially one year through… it’s going by so fast! Now I’m off the the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum for a research internship for the summer! I’m excited to continue to work on interesting research of the Martian surface. I wanted to reflect on a few highlights as I go into this transition period.
- Presenting at LPSC was the highlight of my year. Nothing like getting a shoutout from a role model, meeting people with your dream career, and presenting your own original research! It also made me realize that I CAN indeed do a career in science.
- I took one of the hardest but most rewarding courses. Since my research is so computational, I take courses out of department, one one was CS 501, Mathematical Foundations of Data Science. The math and programming in the course was rigorous and made for many late work nights. But I’m proud of how far I’ve come! Now my statistics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and data science knowledge is much greater and continues to grow. Hard things can be the best things!
- I’ve had the opportunity to mentor a high school student on a project and make substantial progress. I believe that he will publish in the coming months. It is a great reminder of how much I care to share my knowledge and foster science in the next generation of scientists.
- My own paper has been coming along well. I’ve never first-authored a publication before and it has been a learning process and I’m having to teach myself patience and self-encouragement when things get hard.
- I’ve met some of the greatest people. The science community truly is the group of like-minded individuals that I’ve been searching for. I’m grateful for the connections I’ve made and look forward to many more.
New Jersey has been good to me so far, here’s to another 4 (?) years!
