Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Looking back

I am so grateful that I got the chance to participate in the STEM program this year and work with Dr. Bellis. Before this year, I had never even taken a physics class before. It was definitely challenging to start my internship without a lot of background knowledge, especially when I had to do independent work at school. I’d also always thought of scientific research as being in the lab, but my work with Dr. Bellis taught me otherwise. I spent a lot of time on my computer, reading published papers and writing code. It was frustrating at times because I couldn’t really see where all of my work was taking me, but by the end all the pieces started to come together and I really understood what I was studying. I also learned to not let minor obstacles deter me from reaching my research goal. Overall, this year has been a very rewarding experience. I’m looking forward to continuing to do scientific research.

From my poster:

“Particle physicists study the smallest possible things in the universe, and ask the biggest questions. There might be no immediate practical applications to discovering the hybrid meson, but it will take us one step closer to understanding what we’re made of. My internship has given me both practical research skills and a deeper understanding of the unknown. I am no longer scared of the biggest questions. Instead, they push me to keep learning.”


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