Week 8

Group lunch pic!

Welcome back to week 8 - I can't believe we are almost at the end! This week, we spent most of our time working on writing our paper. Arvind, our advisor, wants us to submit a publication in the SIAM undergrad journal, but gave us the option to choose another journal (aka not an undergrad one) if we wanted. There are pros and cons to both sides, so we are still thinking about what we want to do. However, a paper is getting written! We planned to have a working first draft ready by the end of the week, but that did not happen. We got busy with last minute presentations and posters, and switched our focus to getting that done. We had a seminar to attend as well this week on Tuesday, and the guest speaker, Julianne Chung, is actually a collaborator of Arvind's! She came to speak about her area of research and career journey. Her research is focused on computational inverse problems, which is closely related to our project. So, I was able to understand most of her presentation! She is currently a professor at Emory University, which is also running a REU this summer. After her talk, we were able to ask questions and meet with her one on one. For lunch, we went out to eat with our post-doc mentor, Hugo, as well as two others from another group. We went to a Venezuelan place that served arepas and bowls, and the food was really good. On Wednesday, we had a meeting with Arvind to discuss the paper and its organization. After work, we went out with the whole group to trivia night! We went to a different place this time, and the restaurant had a cool vibe. Our group divided up into four teams, and there were five rounds in total. Unfortunately, there was no Latin music category this time, so I wasn't much help. We did not end up winning, but we had a fun time!

Trivia night at Raleigh Beer Garden!

Thursday morning, we worked on finishing our presentation and then switched gears in the afternoon to the poster. On Friday, we received an email in the morning that said our presentation will be the final one so it should include everything we've done rather than just a weekly update. It was very last minute, so we scrambled to add in a few slides and mostly copied and pasted slides from our previous presentations. These Friday presentations are not meant to be high stakes, so we don't stress too much about it, and we ended up giving a pretty good presentation. After the presentations were done, we headed back home and then met up for the social activity. This week, it was a trip to Dix Park. It was a big park and there were lots of things to do - there was a sunflower field, playgrounds, food trucks, drinks, a dog park, etc. The first thing we college students did, of course, was go on the swing sets! I haven't been on a swing in so long, it was super fun to be a kid again swinging back and forth. I will say, though, that the kids playing next to us were giving us big stares haha. After we exhausted that, we walked over to the sunflower field. We also played volleyball for a little bit and then made our way to the food and drink trucks. There was lemonade, snow cones, ice cream, milkshakes, empanadas, and more. I had two scoops of ice cream, and it was delicious! It was a hot day and we were all sweating, so we eventually went to the market store where there was AC, and then headed back home. At night, some of us met up again in the lounge for some games and music.

On Saturday, some of the girls decided to go for a swim at the pool located in the gym. The university's gym was big and the pool was nice. There was a water polo game going on when we arrived, but there were open lanes for us to use. I don't know how to swim, so my friends were trying to teach me the basics. I was basically unsuccessful, but my other friend (who also didn't know) learned some things! After swimming, we went back to our apartments to dry off and shower and then went out to eat at Noodles and Company. I've never been to this place, but it's basically a pasta fast food place. The food was pretty decent considering it was fast food. After that, we went to the Crabtree Valley Mall and walked around the stores. One of the girls needed a dress, so we went to different stores trying to find one, and we ended up finding one at Macy's (you can always count on Macy's to be the safe last option). After that, we drove back home and I made a quick dinner and headed to bed. Sunday was a chill day. I woke up late, made some breakfast, and did laundry. I worked a little on our project and will end the night with a movie in the lounge. That is it for this week, stay tuned for the last full week of the program next week!

Thanks for reading!

Gaby