Week 9
Hinode Confrence

This was my first scientific confrence and it was a lot to take in. I wish I could follow more of the topics, but there were so many technical words that I often got lost and sleepy. I feel bad saying this, but there were some not so great speakers up there who did not structure their talks in a comprehensive manner. There were also many great talks. I thought the one on the Carrington Event using archival records was fascinating.
The poster sessions were my favorite part. I liked going up to the other researchers and asking them to explain their work. I often did not understand a poster just by reading it because of the technical knowledge I currently lack. That is why talking to someone and asking them to explain why their work matters was very useful to me. I was also able to use this time to ask about the fields of solar physcis and astrophysics more broadly. It was intimidating to walk up to people at first and I remember the four solar REU students all standing in an awkward corner for the first half of the reception on Monday.
At the banquet, Aki Takeda lead a dance. Dr. Qiu, Philip, Kelvin, and I hid up on the balcony so that we could not be roped in.
On Saturday, I joined the Louis and Clark Cave Excursion. I had never been in a cave system before and it was well worth the trip. All of the layers of rocks building out were very cool.



Week 10
Dr. Qiu was gone for the week, and my project was mostly done by this point. All I had to do was write a REEADME and finish the website pages. I wanted to make a graph that ploted the mean shear over time, but the positive and negative angles made it to complicated to solve in the busy wrap up week.
On Tuesday, I went on a lonkg hike. I left at 1:30 and walked out to the Highland Glen Nature Preserve. There were many large cows and I had to walk between them. After that, I went to the Farmers Market for dinner.




We had our final oral presentations on Wednsday and the inter-REU poster session on Thursday.
On Friday, the group went to Granny's Dountuts for the last time.