Hello everyone,

The speed at which this REU has passed by is incredible. With all of my experiments done, I was left to finalize some calculations. After that, the entire week was spent on finishing my poster. My mentor has guided me and helped me fix my poster many times to ensure that all of the data was accurate and that I learned how scientific posters are portrayed. I created my poster, and next week will be more focused on practicing my presentation skills. This week left me with a lot of time to reflect on the lessons learned which I will take with me throughout my STEM journey. I managed to overcome setbacks, and I was motivated throughout the REU. There were very few days where I felt hopeless or stressed out, and I am very thankful for that. Being in a material science lab while being a computer science major really opened my eyes to countless possibilities. I still believe that computer science is my main interest, but getting to experience lab work has been great. I hope that next year I will be able to pursue a summer internship in computer science. I believe that is the only way to solidify my choice to stay in that field. I do have to say that I will miss the Rice campus, especially the serveries, and recreational center. Hopefully, I will be accepted to Rice now that I have this wonderful experience.