NASA LARSS 2008: 2nd Month

Originally written on August 5, 2008

Research opportunities, job hunting, etiquette, and... 3-DAY VACATIONS!

During the first week of July, there was a "Graduate Seminar" for all the NASA programs. They mostly talked about the types of graduate school programs you could take once you graduate and get a bachelor's degree. There were quite a few that were connected with NASA, like the NIA graduate program and the NASA Graduate Student Research Program (GSRP) - they both let you do research at NASA for your master's thesis/doctoral dissertation. There was also NASA's co-op program, which allows you to intern at NASA while still going to school, and it gives you the chance to be converted to a full-time civil servant position at NASA once you get 640 work hours and graduate! WOW! I SO wish I could participate in that, but... I only have a single semester left before I graduate, and have no plans to go straight to grad school, so... I can't do it!! I guess I'll just be stuck trying to apply for jobs directly...

They also talked about contractor jobs with NASA - the benefits are different from civil servant positions (of course) but they're MUCH easier to get that civil service jobs! That's something I might consider if no positions are open at LaRC anytime soon... there's at least ONE company that's actually looking for former LARSS interns to hire, so...

There was also a portion of the seminar that dealt with etiquette - what to do and what NOT to do in a business setting, from introducing yourself and others... to how you eat your food when you're at a business meeting/lunch in a fancy restaurant! It's crazy...

And then, by the end of that week, it was Fourth of July weekend, so we all got Friday off, and a 3-day weekend!! I spent it going to gatherings at my relatives' houses. And by the end of July 4th, it rained. What a way to end the day... And the rain kept going all week long the next week...

"NASA OED Gundams fighter squadrons, heading out!" (a.k.a. "Flight Suit photos! In the RAIN!")

Yup! One of the most interesting parts of the program was when they took pictures of us in flight suits, posing in front of a small NASA plane. It wasn't really that sophisticated, though - they just had us dress up in normal old flight suits with a helmet. Now, if they had us dress up in the orange astronaut flight suits and had a SHUTTLE for us to pose in front of... that would have been COOL!! But, of course, we probably would have had to pay for the pictures through our noses... I don't know how my picture came out, since I still haven't seen it yet (actually, I haven't seen a lot of my pictures yet... apparently they're still working on them) but I hope I didn't look drenched - it was raining hard outside before they took the pictures, and I got rained on while on my way to the hangar...

"Ready, set... SCRAMBLE!!" (a.k.a. "You have a poster due in less than 3 days!! Get going, NOW!!")

And... I had to work on the template for a poster featuring my research work on my project, for a poster session that wouldn't start for two more weeks! It was crazy - I ended up having to bring my laptop with me because the OpenOffice equivalent of PowerPoint was annoying me to death (stupid incompatibilities...) and I ended up downloading and teaching myself how to use a molecule image editor that WASN'T ChemDraw so I could make images for the poster. But I got it done... about 2 hours before the deadline...

"Time to relax a little..."

After the nightmare that was the work on the poster, I didn't have much else extra to do, besides wait for calculations to finish.

By the end of the month, the program managers held an Awards Banquet for the students. We all got certificates of participation in the programs, and there was a lot of good food - I was able to eat some, because they weren't so spicy or fattening! It was fun! And it gave me the chance to see how it was to drive down I-64 at night!