Over the course of this four week internship I have not only been able to learn about new subjects but, I was able to learn more about myself. There were aspects of this internship that I believe I thrived with and other things that I realized weren't the best for me. This internship has made me realize that I will thrive better in a more collaborative space. Even though I believe that a collaborative environment is better for me, this internship gave me an opportunity to develop my self-advocacy skills and become more independent as it wasn't as collaborative. This was important for me to do because not everything will be collaborative and you need to be able to be independent. This internship allowed me to realize that I do not want to pursue a research focused career in my future. If I choose to pursue medicine, I now know that I can cross research based careers off of the list. While this internship narrowed down my choices within the medical field, it broadened all of my other options. This is because through this internship I realized that I won't truly know if I enjoy a certain career field unless I experience it. Since I was working with graduate students during this internship, it influenced me to be even more sure that I want to attend graduate school.
I was academically and professionally performing at my best throughout the internship. I believe that I was as prepared for this internship as I could have been. Of course looking back I would have done some things differently. For example, I would have filled out all of the paperwork a few weeks prior, however I couldn't have done that during this internship as I was not aware of the paperwork or the process. But, I can apply this knowledge to any future internships. Over the course of the internship I got more comfortable talking to my coworkers and working in the office. In any future internships I will be able to use this one as an example of what to do and what to improve on. I will be commenting on Jeremy and Nia's blogposts.
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Part 1) Photo Essay Click on photos for more details. Part 2) My Internship Project, Explained My final internship project is a demonstration of a concept behind Atomic Force Microscopy that I created using Arduino. The reason that we decided that this would be my final project is because I hadn't used Arduino that much before and it was realistic for the time that I had. I thought it would be good to do a project using Arduino because it would be a good way for me to learn a new skill and I would be able to experience a little bit of coding. I hadn't coded before this but I always wanted to learn so this was a great way for me to start learning. I created this using jumper wires, a breadboard, an Arduino Uno, a LCD Qapass, an ultrasonic sensor (HC-SR04), a 1K Ohm resistor, and a blue LED. The proximity sensor's has three main interactive components: the ultrasonic sensor, the LCD, and the blue LED. When you put an object in front of the sensor, the LCD will display the distance (in cm) that the object is from the sensor. The LED comes into play when an object is within 10cm of the sensor. When you put the object within 10cm of the sensor, the blue LED will light up as a warning and when you move the object more than 10cm away from the sensor, the LED will turn off. The whole thing works off of the wiring and coding. The coding was done on the online Arduino Editor and the language that you code in is mainly c++. This project was important because it was able to benefit both me and the lab. It benefited me by challenging me to learn new things. I began to learn about coding and I was able to see if I enjoyed it or not. I think that to know if I enjoy coding for sure I would have to do some more coding but, I think that I have enjoyed it enough to want to learn more. I was also able to learn about how to use an Arduino. I watched videos in order to learn more about the wiring of an Arduino and through that I was able to learn more about the basics of electronics. The process of creating my project started by me watching many videos on the basics of coding for Arduino and the basics of circuit making. I watched these videos while I was waiting for the parts of my project to arrive. These videos helped me learn the necessary basics that I would need in order to complete my project. After the parts arrived I used the help of videos to start wiring the parts of my project together. After this I started writing the code for my project. After I finished writing the code, I tested everything multiple times. After tweaking certain parts of the code I was able to have a draft of my product. Then, I decided I wanted to add the LED so I wired that and I wrote the code for it as well. Then I had my final product. Below you will be able to find the code that I used and a wiring diagram I created. The pictures below are of my final project.
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