Weeks 6 & 7

It's been a busy couple of weeks and a while since my last post! I last ended my blog with a Sunday reset, so I'll pick up from there. On Monday and Tuesday, we continued testing our greedy algorithm for cheap and expensive sensors and worked on making our presentation for Wednesday. Week 6 was a relatively short work week because of July 4, so Wednesday was basically our last "work day", so we all gave our 10 minute presentations and then worked till 5pm and left. One of our group mates had to catch a flight that afternoon for a wedding so after we presented at 2pm, she left and our other group mate and I went back to work. We actually managed to have a productive afternoon that day! We implemented the new algorithm our advisor told us about and coded it up in Python. The next day, we came back and tested the algorithm against our other tests and debugged it along the way to get the same results - which meant it was working! We both were also going home that afternoon for the weekend, so we called it a day at 11am and left early. I would say about half of us went home for the weekend while half stayed here. The ones who stayed went to King's Dominion, an amusement park in Virginia, and left early Thursday morning to drive there. I had a flight to catch that afternoon, so I split an Uber with two other friends who were also leaving for the airport on Thursday, so we ended up paying only $7 each. Unfortunately, my flight was delayed and then canceled because of thunderstorms in the NY area. So I got rescheduled to leave the next morning. So on Friday I left for NY and arrived at JFK around noon.

It felt nice being back at home after a month - I forgot how comfortable it is to sleep in your own bed! After I got home, we went over to my aunt's house who was hosting a little Fourth of July party with friends and family. I had three plates of food - I missed home cooked meals! On Saturday, I drove over to Connecticut (I live near the border) to get my eyebrows done from the only person I trust to do it lol. I also hit up the mall afterwards since it was only 5 minutes away. I also caught up on the new season of Squid Games while I was home. On Sunday, I spent some time relaxing in the morning before heading back to the airport. My flight was at 4pm and this time there were no delays, so I was back in Raleigh at 6pm! I cooked myself some dinner and headed to bed early for work the next day.

Week 7 - On Monday, we caught up our group mate on what she missed with the new algorithm we implemented on Thursday and continued testing it together. On Tuesday, we got a message from Arvind, our project advisor, to download the SIAM journal template and start writing in the sections of the paper. Arvind has been away for almost three weeks traveling in Asia, so we have mostly been working with Hugo, our post-doc mentor. However, Arvind came back this week and met with us on Wednesday where we had almost a two hour meeting with him explaining everything we have done since we last saw him. After our meeting, we had our lunch break and then came back for a seminar. This seminar involved us giving a 3-minute one slide presentation on any academic research or project we have done. It was optional but encouraged, so I decided to try it. There were two rounds of presentations, the first on Wednesday where six were chosen to go to the final round on Friday. This REU was the first time I did research so I didn't have past research to present on, so I presented instead on a final project I completed in one of my programming classes. I didn't pass to the final round, but we all received feedback on our Wednesday presentations. Later that night, a group of us decided to go out for trivia night at a nearby restaurant. Some of them went out last week as well, and this time I decided to join. Our group split into two teams and my group ended up beating them! However, we did not win trivia night - there were about 10 teams total and we got 36 points and the 1st place winner got 44 points, but we were close. The last category of trivia was Latin American music, which I was so excited for because it was the only category I actually knew about! It was a fun night and we also got drenched in the rain when we left. On Thursday, we continued working on our algorithms and implemented the changes Arvind suggested to do. For dinner that night, some of us went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant. We took the bus there and made it just in time before it started raining hard again! The food was pretty good, but I was so full by the end. However, that didn't stop us from going to buy cookies at the dessert shop down the road.

The cookie order took a little longer than expected, so we missed the bus back. So, we decided to walk back to our apartments. It was a 25-30 minute walk, which wasn't too bad considering it was cooler by the time we headed back. On our walk back, we saw a double rainbow which was super cool! On Friday, we debugged our other algorithm and met with one of Arvind's grad students. She was super nice and stopped by to talk with us for a little while. She also did this summer REU at NCSU and gave us some insight into what grad school is like. After our chat, we met with Arvind and discussed our next steps. We then attended the second round of the 3-minute presentations, where there was a winner and two runner ups. Later that afternoon, we all headed to Mette's (the program director) house for a pool party. She hosts this every year and we had a good time. She had a big pool and pizza! On Saturday, I slept in late and then decided to visit the art museum in Raleigh. I went with my roommate, Maya, and another friend who met up with us there. We walked around the two buildings and after we explored most of the museum, we decided to make a quick stop at a supermarket and then head back home. At night, we met up with the group in the lounge for some games and food. And I think that sums up this week(s).

Thanks for reading!

Gaby