I have officially finished my first research speech for ISM! I will be honest with you, I was nervous about this speech. However, I prepared for hours on this and I do feel like I gave my best. In order to well on this speech, I first made a list of the main things I learned about astronomy through my assessments and interviews. I wanted to showcase research from astrophysics and astrobiology because those are the sub-fields that I am most interested in. After this, I made an outline of my speech and made a power point to go along with that. As soon as I did that, I wrote down briefly about what I wanted to say for each part. I then started to practice. I did a number or run troughs so I could get really comfortable with my speech. The next day I gave my speech. Yes, it was definitely not perfect but I truly felt that I gained a lot from it. I learned to give a professional presentation to a large group of people and it was a worthwhile experience. Apart from my speech, I started working on my HAS projects. NASA had sent a lot of resources for me to look at. My favorite was a program that they sent. The program allowed me to look at NASA's satellites and telescopes and get information on the data they were collecting. This was so cool. I stayed up all night learning about the planets and stars with this program. With all that I learned from this program, I wrote a research paper. This essay included on what I wanted to learn about out universe, what telescope I would use to find it, and why the research would be beneficial. By doing this research, I learned a lot about the telescopes in our universe. On that note, this past week has been nothing short of learning and I hope I keep learning throughout my life.
