Hello World (from a star)

Hello World!

Hello anonymous internet stalker (if you know me irl, no you don’t),

I’m currently writing this post at 3:08 PM on Monday, March 18th 2024, on the plane from New Orleans to Boston. To be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing, but here goes nothing.

I’m going to start out by explaining my reasons for even writing a blog. After thinking about it for the past couple months and reading other people’s blogs (shoutout to the MIT admissions blog and Max Wu’s BU RISE blog), I realized how many memories from my past I’ve already forgotten and/or lost to time. While the core memories are still there, the details have become fuzzy. I’ve always prided myself on having a “great memory,” so forgetting even the smallest thing is very much a big deal to me. I want to have a resource for me to look back on my life 5 or even 10 years from now—a snapshot of who I am if you will, including all my high and lows. I hope to be able to revisit some memories when I’m (hopefully) older and wiser and be able to smile back at them. I’ll probably cringe, but then again, who wouldn’t?

For my first blog post, I think it’s appropriate to give an overview of one of the busiest and longest weekends in my life so far. As a warning in advance, a lot of this is going to be just me listing everything I did incoherently, so bear with me.

Friday: Living With a Star

Okay, that heading probably makes no sense without context. No, I am not actually living with a star. No, I am not using star as an anology for a famous person. Instead, Living With a Star, or LWS, is the name of a NASA mission which “targets specific aspects of the Sun-Earth system that affect life and society.” Relevantly, it aims to understand space weather conditions at Earth, which can negatively impact communication and navigation systems. You’ll see how this is relevant in a bit.

I Love Space Physics!

To discuss new advances in topics covered by LWS, a small group of space physicists gather together twice a year for a short, two-day meeting. I was invited to one of these mini-conferences regarding the topic of “Modeling and Validation of Ionospheric Irregularities and Scintillations.” That probably means a whole lot of nothing to most people, but the gist of it is that variations in ion density (ionospheric irregularities) in the ionosphere, an energized layer of the atmosphere, can cause variations in GPS signals (scintillation) as they travel from GPS satellites to GPS receivers on Earth. Anyways, Dr. Nishimura, the research mentor that I’ve been working with since September of last year, invited me a few weeks ago to give an oral presentation at this mini-conference which was being held at Boston University. He believed my research project regarding the effects of the Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement (STEVE) on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signals fit the topic well. I was really excited for this opportunity as it would be the first time I presented my research to an adult, professional audience. Additionally, given that conference was small (~20), I felt the stakes were pretty low. Of course, I still had to be prepared for the meeting, and although knowing the meeting was going to be small soothed my nerves a little, I was still concerned about embarassing myself by blabbing and being unable to answer any questions.

To prepare for the mini-conference, I met with Dr. Nishimura two times — the first time was to make my oral presentation, and the second was to practice presenting. Luckily, I was able to reuse a lot of the figures that I had made for my science fair poster, so making the presentation itself didn’t take that long. He also gave me many helpful comments and fixes for errors that I hadn’t seen. During our second meeting on the Wednesday before the conference (the conference lasted from Thursday to Friday), he also sent me the schedule for the conference. It was really cool to see my name listed as one of the speakers, and it felt almost as if I was on the same level as tenured professors, even though I knew their knowledge far exceeded mine.

Going into the conference, I felt pretty good about myself. Since I had school on Thursday and didn’t want to miss two days in a row, I skipped the conference on Thursday and was the only scheduled presenter on Friday before the overflow talks. This gave me some extra time to prepare. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to join the Zoom call to watch any of the presentations on Thursday, but I spent that evening practicing my talk a few times. I also picked out my outfit for that day, which was my favorite pair of jeans, a blue dress shirt, and a blue sweater over it. Finally, I emailed my presentation over to Dr. Nishimura, in case the presentation didn’t load on my computer.

The morning of, my mom graciously drove my from home to the BU College of Arts and Sciences, where I then rode the elevator to the 5th floor where the conference was being held. Only two rooms were being used — one was for refreshments, and the other was where the speakers would present. I was pretty early, so I walked into the room where the presentations were going to be held and made small talk with a few of the professors that were already there. They asked me how long I had been working with Toshi (my mentor) and where I was from. Afterwards, I investigated the setup. I had expected a more formal setting (i.e. a stage/podium/big screen situation), but it turned out to be pretty casual. The room was laid out with a bunch of tables forming a U-shape in the center and then rows of tables on both sides. A podium was at the front, but it went unused. The presenters were able to present while sitting at their seats at each table. I set my backpack down on one of the tables to the right of the room and left to find the bathroom on the 4th floor. When I came back, the room was more full and I saw Dr. Nishimura sitting at one of the center tables. This was the first time we had met in person, so I wanted to say some things, but he immediately came over to me to talk about the details for my upcoming presentation. We added a slide last-minute of a close-up view of the total electron content and STEVE.

Finally, it was the time for my presentation, which was first up on the schedule. I moved from the side table to the back of the U-shaped tables and joined the Zoom call, where I then started screen-sharing. There was a microphone hanging from the ceiling, so I disconnected from audio. The next 15 minutes seemed to zoom past. I made some small errors and used a lot of “uhmmmmms,” but I was able to correct myself. Overall, I think my talk went pretty well. At the end, the professors had some questions about the specifics of the study and some ideas for what I could do in the future. Specifically, there was this one guy with long hair who asked a lot of question. Unfortunately, I was unable to answer some of these questions, but luckily Dr. Nishimura stepped in for me. Dr. Semeter, one of the other professors at the BU Center of Space Physics interested in my research, also made a comment over Zoom about my “Very nice research and results!”, which made me very happy.

After my talk, the meeting organizer had scheduled the overflow talks for the day prior. These talks were pretty interesting, and I heard one from Dr. Semeter on modelling Alfven waves/gravity waves. The talks mostly flew over my head in the details, but I think I could understand their general overviews. Some random notes:

• What are gravity waves??? (they are NOT gravitational waves)
• Lots of back-and-forth conversation, more intimate than I though, ~14 attendants, 19 in the zoom
• Long hair guy and Dr. Semeter had very long conversation about an equation
• Amusing conversation between the old quiet guy and Dr. Semeter about how to solve a differential equation

For some final thoughts, I thought that overall, the mini-conference was a very positive experience. It was nice getting to meet/see some of the professors whose research I had become familiar with over the past few months, especially being able to meet Dr. Nishimura and Dr. Semeter in person. It was also nice getting some experience presenting in a professional setting and seeing what it was liked to be asked real questions about my research.

Across the River

Following the meeting, I didn’t really have much to do. I got lunch at Nud Pob and got the Thai Basil Chicken which was very good, and I ended up spotting the long-haired professor getting pick up from the same place while I was eating.

After my meal, I ended up walking to Brookline and sat at Tatte. I was debating whether I should have gone to T Baar or H Mart to get a drink, but settled for Tatte as I had never been to the Brookline location. I ended up getting a matcha latte with almond milk and grabbed a seat by the bar.

As a side note, I feel like everytime I get a matcha latte, it ends up being a disappointment (cough cough that one place in Providence…). Anyways, I casually sipped on my latte as I opened my computer. I was planning to work on my APUSH paper that was due on Monday, but ended up procrastinating on Discord. I briefly considered some options on what I was going to do for the rest of the day. Some of the things I considered were:

1. Locking in and doing my work at Tatte
2. Going on a tour of MIT
3. Walking to the Hayden library

I ended up choosing to go study at Hayden library until 4, when my mom and sister were going to come pick me up and take me to tea at this bougie tea place (Coterie) in the 4 Seasons hotel near BPL. I walked from Brookline to Cambridge across the Harvard Bridge, which was actually very nice even though it was pretty chilly and windy. I really should go on more walks around Boston.

When I got to the Hayden library, I ended up going through the back entrance because I was too socially anxious to enter through the front. Fortunately for me, some kind gentleman opened up the back door to let me in because (I think) I looked like an MIT student. I ended up choosing a spot in “The Nexus”, which was this mixed-use event planning area which was also a study area? Anyways, they ended up opening the big rolling shutter used to separate the Nexus from the rest of the library, so I ended up being in a pretty open/exposed area. I (semi) worked on my APUSH paper for the next hour, and it really gave me a taste of what studying at MIT felt like. Some guy ended up asking if he could sit at my table which I said yes to, but he ended up leaving after he finished his salad.

Anyways, around 4:30ish, my mom ended up telling me that she arrived, and I packed my stuff and went to her car. We then went to the tea place, where my mom got a cheeseboard and my sister got a french onion soup. The food was alright, very overpriced in my opinion, but the free bread and cream cheese they gave us was nice. I ended up talking about how brie cheese was going extinct soon because of the lack of genetic diversity in the mold they were using.

After that, we had plans to go for hot pot at Shu Da Xia, a place near my sister’s dorm in the Towers. We were supposed to meet my step dad and step siblings there, as well as meet my sister’s friend Baron. When we got there however, Baron told us that there was going to be ~30 minute wait for our table of 7, which was fine. We ended up waiting in Questrom for 30 minutes before I got impatient and wanted a drink. The Starbucks in Questrom was closed, so my sister suggested we take the shuttle to the one in GSU, but that was also closed for spring break. My sister and step sister ended up walking back to Questrom, while I walked to the convenience store in Warren to buy some drinks to go. However, my card ended up declining because I forgot my PIN, which was pretty embarassing. The cashier definitely thought I was an idiot, and I agree. However, in my defense, I hadn’t needed to enter my PIN in a longggggg time because I was so used to using ApplePay, but I guess you win some, you lose some.

We then ended up getting an absolute boatload of food at Shu Da Xia, and I left feeling absolutely stuffed. However, I needed to get as much rest as possible when I got home, as I would be leaving to New Orleans early in the morning on Saturday and meeting up with Kenneth at the airport. However, that will have to go on a later blog.

If you managed to read this garbage can of word vomit to the very end, I am both thankful for your interest and astounded by your tenacity. I am now publishing this more than 2 months later, on May 19th, 2024, so I hope you enjoyed reading.

Signing off, Richard