The interns gave their final presentations on Friday, and they were all amazing!! Although I am sad that the internship is over, I am very grateful to have been given this opportunity to learn and pursue a topic that I find so interesting and have been studying for the last two years at school. I am also really happy that I was able to calculate an additional six "n" values that support the conclusion that there is a correlation between the speed of CMEs and their exponent values. My research provided further evidence than published in a prior journal article because I found and analyzed CMEs of various speeds where the journal article's scientists only analyzed three CMEs, two slow and one fast. I think that it was a very successful summer and that my data can contribute to more precisely being able to predict when a CME will hit Earth.

I want to give a huge thank you to Dr. Dube for being my advisor this summer. He was incredibly helpful and patient, and his passion for his work while mentoring me was very inspiring. I am fortunate that he has offered to stay in touch and continue to advise me as I further my research back in Connecticut. I want to thank Bethany and Bob for heading such an awesome internship program and for making the summer so much fun. I also want to thank Joe Pow, Elizabeth, Killian, Nate, Billy, and Matt for inviting me to work in their lab this summer. They were a really fun group and I am going to miss them a lot!! I am going to miss all of the other interns too, but I am optimistic that we will stay in touch. To have been able to spend an entire summer working with these great people and helping to further research on a topic that I love was truly a special opportunity! Thank you to all who made it possible!!

I had a really great day today! I came into work this morning extremely nervous to present in front of Bethany, Bob, and the other interns. While I was presenting, though, I realized it wasn't really that bad and by the time I finished I thought I had done a pretty good job! I got some good criticisms and I spent the rest of the day making final edits to my PowerPoint. After I finished the presentation and gave the updated version to Bethany, Simran, Sara, Mary Emma, Mia, and I all took a little tour of the campus and took a lot of great pictures for me to bring back to Connecticut. I am really sad that tomorrow is the last day because I loved going to work everyday and I loved hanging out with all of the interns. Tonight I tried a garbage plate for the first time too! A lot of the interns had been telling me to get one, but I always said no because it just sounded so gross. However, I was surprised that it was actually kind of good, and I am glad that I did something special to Rochester on my last night here. All I can do now is hope tomorrow goes well!

I finished the PowerPoint today!!! I typed out an entire script that has the most important points that I want to cover for each slide, and now I need to go home and review it a few times so that I am comfortable to present tomorrow and then again on Friday! I am glad that it is done and that I feel good about the material because it has made me a lot less nervous about tomorrow! We also had Christmas in August today, which was basically just a Secret Santa, and Sara brought in an actual Christmas Tree! It was super fun and Elizabeth gave me Giants flip-flops, a Giants rubber ducky, and a Giants bracelet! I am so excited for the football season to start and now I have all this great stuff!!! Tomorrow we are all going to sit down and do a run-through of our presentations, so hopefully I present well so that I have no worries going into Friday!

Today I just continued to work on my presentation.  It is really coming along and tomorrow I hope to just add some finishing touches!  I am still trying to decide whether it would be best for me to write out a script, or just practice a few times.  Sometimes I think that if I get too attached to a script, then it will sound choppy when I try and present.  I can't believe that there are only three days left but I am going to try to make the most of them!

After the last Monday morning meeting, I continued working on my presentation.  I got through a lot of it, but I still have to add a lot more pictures and I need to add some more information to the introduction.  Ian helped me a tremendous amount today with editing pictures, so a huge thanks to him! I would also like to write up a script of what I am going to say before I present to the interns on Thursday.  I can't believe how long it is taking me to put this presentation together, but I want to make sure it is good!

Yesterday, Dr. Dube and I analyzed the 15 "n" values that I had calculated from the day before. We found a pattern that as the speed of the CME increased, then the "n" value increased. However, Dr. Dube showed me a journal article that stated that slow CMEs should have "n" values close to two, and that fast CMEs should have "n" values around one. We were able to find a pattern, but it was not supportive of the data already published in the journal article. Dr. Dube and I spent the rest of the day looking at my numbers and we came to the conclusion that we really only needed the velocity of the CME as it traveled towards Earth. I simplified my calculations so that I was only calculating the velocity of the CME with data from the STEREO-A and STEREO-B satellites. When I recalculated the numbers this morning, my "n" values supported what was stated in the journal article I mentioned earlier. I am really happy that Dr. Dube and I were able to locate a pattern in my calculations. I spent the rest of the day making my presentation!! We also had a really fun, final BBQ!!

After the morning meeting I got straight into working on my presentation and I got the introduction, hypotheses, and the approach done.  I haven’t chosen a pretty background yet, and I don’t have any pictures, so it looks really ugly right now.  I got one successful intensity profile vs. proton flux correlation graph, but I couldn’t seem to get any more.  I also went back to my calculations of “n” and finished them up.  I was able to get 15 “n” values and I think I found a pattern that would conclude my research this summer!  I still would like to find two more CMEs that I can track the shapes of so that my final statement, about whether or not drag affects them, is as accurate as possible.  I am just going to keep working on my presentation tomorrow and Friday.  I am also going to keep looking for more CMEs so that my data is accurate and precise.  I also submitted my final abstract for the presentation today!