Update
I know it's been a while since I last updated, but I thought I'd put up another post for the next half year or so.
This summer seems to have gone by pretty quickly after I finally began my summer job at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I was hired to help with a documentation project that turned out to really be programming a content-driven website in PHP using the open-source project Drupal. Because I was working for the High Performance Computing division, I was requried to present what I had done in their "symposium" with some random title that made it blatently obvious that politicians wanted to appear to support the sciences. I didn't really expect much from it, but I ended up getting one of five scholarships handed out by the CTN and HPC divisions as well as getting a resume request from an application development division at the lab.
So all-in-all the symposium thing really gave me some more opportunities for the future, and my winning of the small scholarship caught the attention of the new HPC-3 group leader (my group) who took my mentor and me out to lunch. We talked about all sorts of things including jobs for the following summers, and it looks like they will have a spot for me if I need/want one next summer. I guess they seem pretty sure about it even with the pending budget cuts for the lab, but the computing division is an integral part of the lab and will always be well-funded.
The job itself was interesting after about a week and a half at the lab had solidified my actual job. There were good parts and bad parts, with one of the ones I disliked the most being the fact that I spent my summer in a converted warehouse that did not have air conditioning in a reasonably dark cubicle. Another annoying part was one guy that kept suggesting things to pursue that ended up being useless--the kicker was that I couldn't just ignore him and had to check them all out. The good things included my ability to use the "wellness center" at the lab that was literally less right next to my building, a salary that will have me with a net profit of $3000 for the summer (half of which is going towards a new computer unless my parents decide to help me out), and a very helpful boss that drove me around a few times and takes me to the grocery store so I don't have to pay another student with a car a small sum for the trip. The job also had the concequence of forcing me into getting my first apartment and being completely independent for the first time in my life, and getting through that has really helped me out in a lot of ways.
Being in New Mexico also let me see my Dad's side of the family who I haven't seen for at least ten years. It was interesting to be re-introduced to them, and I finally know where my Dad gets his new-age influences. Seeing my great-uncle was great, and my cousins were both doing quite well. I also met a few people who are attending Washington University in St. Louis (including one of my cousins) that I hope to see when I visit Amanda there. It was also fun riding the bus because of the people I met who included long-time lab employees (a geophysicist and an aerospace engineer, probably working on designing nukes or something else hard and cool) as well as other students from all over. One student was born in the Soviet Union and more recently from Israel and was into computer science, another had just finished his bachelor's degree in something environmental, and finally one who just finished a bachelors degree in physics at Dartmouth.
Another thing I did this summer was to take two days off of work to fly back to Wisconsin and attend my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. There were so many people there that I hadn't seen in a VERY long time, as well as all of my cousins on my Mom's side of the family who I am getting to see more and more infrequently.
Amanda came to live at my apartment with me for a while as well. Having here there really made my almost as happy as I can imagine in conjunction with an interesting and well-paying job. We went on hikes together, made both quality and failed dinners, read Harry Potter and a little of Atlas Shrugged in our free time, and having the great company was perhaps the best part of all. Her parents took her, her sister and me to see a production of La Boheme at the Santa Fe opera --one of the best in the country-- when they were in town to drive Amanda back home, and it was absolutely amazing!
Looking forward, I am sure excited about going to NYC and beginning school again. However, after my job at the lab this summer and the possibilities for employment there (and perhaps elsewhere) I am starting to wonder about going directly to graduate school--the main debate I have is whether or not it is a better financial move to live cheaply for a year or two and save up a lot of money before beginning graduate school, because if I can save $1000/mo at my current job, I could really jump-start my retirement savings! Getting to see a lot of my rocker friends will be really great, and I'm sure we'll make the academic year really awesome.
This summer seems to have gone by pretty quickly after I finally began my summer job at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I was hired to help with a documentation project that turned out to really be programming a content-driven website in PHP using the open-source project Drupal. Because I was working for the High Performance Computing division, I was requried to present what I had done in their "symposium" with some random title that made it blatently obvious that politicians wanted to appear to support the sciences. I didn't really expect much from it, but I ended up getting one of five scholarships handed out by the CTN and HPC divisions as well as getting a resume request from an application development division at the lab.
So all-in-all the symposium thing really gave me some more opportunities for the future, and my winning of the small scholarship caught the attention of the new HPC-3 group leader (my group) who took my mentor and me out to lunch. We talked about all sorts of things including jobs for the following summers, and it looks like they will have a spot for me if I need/want one next summer. I guess they seem pretty sure about it even with the pending budget cuts for the lab, but the computing division is an integral part of the lab and will always be well-funded.
The job itself was interesting after about a week and a half at the lab had solidified my actual job. There were good parts and bad parts, with one of the ones I disliked the most being the fact that I spent my summer in a converted warehouse that did not have air conditioning in a reasonably dark cubicle. Another annoying part was one guy that kept suggesting things to pursue that ended up being useless--the kicker was that I couldn't just ignore him and had to check them all out. The good things included my ability to use the "wellness center" at the lab that was literally less right next to my building, a salary that will have me with a net profit of $3000 for the summer (half of which is going towards a new computer unless my parents decide to help me out), and a very helpful boss that drove me around a few times and takes me to the grocery store so I don't have to pay another student with a car a small sum for the trip. The job also had the concequence of forcing me into getting my first apartment and being completely independent for the first time in my life, and getting through that has really helped me out in a lot of ways.
Being in New Mexico also let me see my Dad's side of the family who I haven't seen for at least ten years. It was interesting to be re-introduced to them, and I finally know where my Dad gets his new-age influences. Seeing my great-uncle was great, and my cousins were both doing quite well. I also met a few people who are attending Washington University in St. Louis (including one of my cousins) that I hope to see when I visit Amanda there. It was also fun riding the bus because of the people I met who included long-time lab employees (a geophysicist and an aerospace engineer, probably working on designing nukes or something else hard and cool) as well as other students from all over. One student was born in the Soviet Union and more recently from Israel and was into computer science, another had just finished his bachelor's degree in something environmental, and finally one who just finished a bachelors degree in physics at Dartmouth.
Another thing I did this summer was to take two days off of work to fly back to Wisconsin and attend my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. There were so many people there that I hadn't seen in a VERY long time, as well as all of my cousins on my Mom's side of the family who I am getting to see more and more infrequently.
Amanda came to live at my apartment with me for a while as well. Having here there really made my almost as happy as I can imagine in conjunction with an interesting and well-paying job. We went on hikes together, made both quality and failed dinners, read Harry Potter and a little of Atlas Shrugged in our free time, and having the great company was perhaps the best part of all. Her parents took her, her sister and me to see a production of La Boheme at the Santa Fe opera --one of the best in the country-- when they were in town to drive Amanda back home, and it was absolutely amazing!
Looking forward, I am sure excited about going to NYC and beginning school again. However, after my job at the lab this summer and the possibilities for employment there (and perhaps elsewhere) I am starting to wonder about going directly to graduate school--the main debate I have is whether or not it is a better financial move to live cheaply for a year or two and save up a lot of money before beginning graduate school, because if I can save $1000/mo at my current job, I could really jump-start my retirement savings! Getting to see a lot of my rocker friends will be really great, and I'm sure we'll make the academic year really awesome.