top of page

October Blogs

Week of 10/05-10/09

Weekly updates:

  • Monday: 

    • Reviewed my blog and submitted it

    • Final review and preparations for the Business Symposium

  • Tuesday: 

    • Attended the business symposium and was interviewed by two professionals

    • Fixed my resume accordion to the feedback from professionals

  • Wednesday:

    • Worked on re 

  • Thursday:

    • Was given an overview of the business symposium and heard the overall feedback from the professionals

    • Introduced to our next assignment for this week: creating a contact list, setting up a voicemail and creating a rough draft of a professional email.

    • Began working on the contact list.

  • Friday:

    • Finished up the contact list

    • Revised for grammatical errors or missing information

    • Began working on the weekly blog.

 

Reflection:

This week was filled with a lot of activities which made it a little overwhelming but mostly was an incredible learning experience. The business symposium was a lot different than I imagined it because time seemed to move much faster during it. When we first logged in, we had a bit of a technology problem, and this caused my nerves to further increase. And because of this, during my first interview, I was a lot more nervous and I rambled a little while answering the questions. I especially got nervous when she asked us questions that were different from the ones we practised. I got a lot of helpful feedback from the first professional and I was feeling much calmer after this. The second interview went much better and was much more conversational. My second interviewer also had a lot of insight about my topic and I enjoyed talking about it with him. By the end of the business symposium, I had a much better understanding of how interviews work and how I should act during one. The feedback from the professionals also helped me decide what I should fix in future interviews and what I should keep. This experience has been very helpful and I feel a little more confident about being interviewed in the future. The other assignment for this week was the contact list. This took a lot of time as it was difficult to find professionals with their email and phone number online. In the end, most of the professionals that I chose were in high positions working for NASA, Carnegie Observatories or Ivy League schools. I will work to find more contacts of professionals related to my profession at smaller levels who are more likely to respond to my emails and calls. I will also polish my interview skills and work on furthering my astronomy knowledge to interview these professionals in the future.

Week of 10/12-10/16

Weekly updates:

  • Monday: 

    • Reviewed my blog and submitted it

  • Tuesday: 

    • Introduced to thank you notes and its importance in class

    • Learned how to leave a professional voicemail. 

    • Was assigned to write two thank you notes to the interviewers during the business symposium

  • Wednesday:

    • Began writing my thank you notes on a google doc

  • Thursday:

    • Was reminded of the two assignments due on Friday- the thank you notes and the research assessment #3.

    • Practised leaving voicemails in class and introduced to what to say to a professional when calling them

    • Finished up my thank you notes, through Canva

    • Decided on a research topic (dark matter and dark energy), found an article relating to this topic by NASA and began annotating the article 

  • Friday:

    • Emailed the thank you notes to the professionals

    • Wrote my rough draft for the research assessment, then edited it

    • Revised the assessment for grammatical errors or missing information

    • Began working on the weekly blog.

 

Reflection:

This week was extremely informative and productive. After doing two research assessments, I have learned how to do it properly and have begun to enjoy the research part of them. Learning about dark energy and matter this week was very interesting. I have also learned the importance of thank you notes and how to properly write a thank you note to professionals. And lastly, the voicemail and phone script were a little hard for me as I sound too scripted, so during this weekend, I will be working on being more conversational over the phone.

Week of 10/19-10/23

Weekly updates:

  • Monday: 

    • Reviewed my blog and submitted it

    • Given time to send emails and voicemails in class

  • Tuesday: 

    • Received one reply from a professional through email

    • Found more contacts online and through LinkedIn to contact.

  • Wednesday:

    • Left more voicemails to professionals during class

  • Thursday:

    • Received one more reply to an interview request, after a few emails, scheduled an interview for 2:00pm on Friday

    • Practiced for the interview tomorrow by reviewing questions, working on my conversational flow and conducting to prior research on the professional

  • Friday:

    • Conducted the interview with a professor in the department of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin

    • Emailed the thank you note to the professor after the interview

    • Began working on the weekly blog.

 

Reflection:

This week was not packed with assignments as we focused on securing interviews. During the first half of the week, I became increasingly frustrated due to the lack of responses. When two professionals finally replied, I was very excited to have the opportunity to interview someone. The scheduling for the first interview was very rushed due to the professionals busy schedule, and I didn't have much time to prepare. Despite this I was still able to ask all the questions I wanted to and ended up with 5 more contacts to interview. The interview I had with the professor at the University of Texas at Austin was extremely informative and I learned a lot about the various opportunities in this field and the dedication required to succeed in it. In the end this was my first interview, and although it wasn’t my best, I could see slight improvement from the business symposium. One thing that I noticed I should improve upon is responding back after the professional had answered my questions (that is transitioning between questions). I could also include more questions next time, as we ran through the ones I had pretty quickly. As soon as the interview ended, I also made sure to send a thank you note to the professional.

Week of 10/26-10/30

Weekly updates:

  • Monday: 

    • Reviewed my blog and submitted it

    • Received one reply from a professional through email; set up an interview for Thursday

  • Tuesday: 

    • Received one reply from a professional through email; set up an interview for Wednesday.

    • Practised for the interview tomorrow by reviewing questions and conducting to prior research on the professional

  • Wednesday:

    • Conducted an interview with a graduate student at Texas A&M University at 5 pm.

    • Emailed the thank you note to the professional after the interview

    • Practised for the interview tomorrow by reviewing questions and conducting to prior research on the professional

  • Thursday:

    • Introduced to Quick trip speech in class and the Interview Assignment #1 due on Friday

    • Began writing an outline for the speech

    • Had an interview with the Magellan Instrumentation Scientist at 9 am in the morning

    • Emailed the thank you note to the professional after the interview

  • Friday:

    • Finished the Interview Assignment for this week and submitted it

    • Began working on the weekly blog.

 

Reflection:

This week was very accomplishing. The two interviews I conducted gave me very different views of astronomy but many parts of it overlapped. Again another common factor was the importance of statistics and math classes taken both in high school and college. The Instrumentation Scientist who works in Brazil recommended that I join an amateur astronomy club to get familiar with telescopes. She spent a good portion of the interview talking about the three branches of astronomical careers, which was theoretical, observational, and technical. As a professional on the technical side, she travels a lot to work at various observatories and has had interchanging work hours. She also mentioned that optical science was something that I should be knowledgeable in. The other professional I interviewed was majoring in physics with an interest in dark matter. She talked about her classes, experience in college, and her current research which helped me visualize what my college years will look like in the future. As she is still a student, she had many podcasts, textbooks, and research papers that she recommended that I look into. I enjoyed both of the interviews and was able to gain an even better understanding of the astronomy field and topics within it.

bottom of page