Over the past 10 weeks, I have developed relationships I will never forget and learned new skills to further my career in astrophysics.

The last weekend was spent at the Brookhaven National Lab in Yorktown Heights, New York. The photo on the left shows the STAR detector for the accelerator shown on the right. We were unable to get a private tour, but the public tour was far worth it. We spent the day in awe of modern physics.

I have given my research talk and poster presentation to the department and my peers, and everything is coming to a close. I was very pleased with the knowledge I was able to gain in just 10 weeks. I was able to comprehensively answer questions I would not have dreamed to be able to answer at the beginning. The photo below shows the poster I presented. My research advisor and I plan to meet at the American Astronomical Society conference in January for me to present my work there as well. 

Leaving my internship was bittersweet. I now have friends all over the United States, and I am certain we will all never been in the same place at the same time ever again. I know the friendships will continue until I am old. As school approaches, I am eager to start classes and begin my teaching assistant job. I am excited to teach younger students in my department how to code, observe, and write scientific research papers. This is going to bring me much closer to being a professor someday. I will also be continuing my research with Project MINERVA this fall, finding exoplanets.

As I look to graduate schools for Fall 2017, I will consider the things I learned at Rutgers University this summer and hope to apply them to the rest of my career to become a leader in my field. I thank everyone that made this opportunity possible for me.