I am now back in Puerto Rico. As I sit on my bed with only a fan set to high and its attempt to cool me off on this hot summer night, I’ve thought long and hard about the final message I wish to leave on my blog:

I want to start off by saying thanks. Thank you to all the mentors, graduate students, coordinators, directors, tech support, and all workers behind-the-scenes who made SPIRE-EIT possible. I also want to thank my fellow interns for you all taught me so much, brought me so many laughs, and gave me so much support. Thank you for one of the best birthdays of my life.

I will remember each and everyone of you. Your stories inspired me to become a better person. You all showed me that I was capable of doing more and that it was okay for me to show my weaknesses. Your stories taught me that I wasn’t alone in having a past full of twists and turns. Some of you went though similar experiences and your stories of how you overcame them inspired me to fully let go of the lingering attachment I had to my past hurt.

I also never felt judged for not knowing something while I was at ISU. In fact, I was supported and guided whenever I wanted to learn something new and had any questions in regards to anything.

Overall, it was an unforgettable summer. As cliché as it sounds, SPIRE-EIT really did end up changing my life. And I will forever be grateful. Thanks again, and God bless you all.

Note: After reflecting on my 2019 experiences, I decided to look bakc the SPIRE-EIT blogs. I found that never published my final post… Hehe. Apologies. Here it is. 😅

What a wonderful day yesterday. All us SPIRE interns got the opportunity to go to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and in the afternoon, the Mall of America. It was such a breath of fresh air to get out of Ames and Iowa in general. On the way to the university, I got to see skyscrapers, which we don’t have in Puerto Rico! Just for comparison, The tallest building in PR is 288 ft tall and has only 23 floors, while the 20th tallest building, the Marriott Hotel City Center, has 392 ft and has 32 floors. It also doesn’t help that the “skyscrapers” in PR mostly in the capital of San Juan, which is almost 3 hours away from where I live.

Here are the sources for the tallest building statistics for Puerto Rico and Minnesota:

https://www.emporis.com/statistics/tallest-buildings/country/100193/puerto-rico

https://www.emporis.com/statistics/tallest-buildings/city/101331/minneapolis-mn-usa

We arrived at the University of Minnesota. Who knew the campus would be so beautiful! We walked around the campus, seeing the buildings, the trees, the environment— It was all so wonderful. Later on at the 2 VR labs we visited, we saw demos of projects from other graduate and REU students there. One of their most fascinating projects was their use of zSpace, a technology that combines both AR and VR on a desktop screen that through the use of their glasses and a stylus, you could pluck the object out from the screen and see it in a 3-Dimensional fashion. Objects we saw were a human brain, jaw, and heart. You could even make some parts of the heart transparent so you could see inside it and see how the heart was pumping blood through the valves!

After that, both the REU students from Iowa as well as the ones from the University of Minnesota presented their projects to one another. We did not have live demos, but rather slide presentations and pictures regarding the work we were doing. It was pretty cool seeing new projects from other REU students.

In the afternoon, we went to the Mall of America. We explored, shopped a bit, and checked out Nickelodeon World, a cute amusement park right in the center of the mall mostly based on Nickelodeon cartoons. On the way back, I slept in the car and listened to the conversations people were having after I woke up. The car rides to and from Minnesota were 3 hours long each, which was an arduous experience and tested my patience. Overall, the trip in Minnesota was amazing and I’m really glad the wait paid off.

It’s Wednesday morning and here are some updates about Team Ballistics’ accomplishments this week.

1. Successfully implemented the linear regression code.
2. Completed the task of opening of the zip files in which our bullet data is stored on (program needed to be capable of automatically accessing the files of a zipped file without the user having to decompress it manually.
3. Implemented partitioning our data matrix into 3 by 3 sections which we can use to derive location-based statistics about the bullet scan, rather than looking individually into all rows and columns or getting simplified statistic of the full scan.
4. Finished writing the introduction of our research paper draft.
5. Revised our abstract using the feedback of our project faculty mentor.

Overall, its been a productive past two days. As for details outside the project, on Monday I attended the professional development workshop, “How to build your professional network?” which was given by Karin Lawton-Dunn – Graduate College Career Services Coordinator. It was very informative and I learned a lot. I found out just how influential LinkedIn has become in the states. It has never been emphasized in my college career in Puerto Rico, though it’s still not widely used in Puerto Rico it makes sense that it is not as fundamental as here in the US. However, I am planning to move back to the states one day, so it was a great realization about its importance. I also learned about the process of conducting “informational interviews” and received general tips for improving my networking skills. I kind of regret not attending previous professional development workshops here during the summer, although a lot of the time, they did interfere with a class/schedule event in the SPIRE curriculum.

It’s been many days and many nights. Time flies by so fast here— yet so slowly at the same time. One day goes by and woosh! You’ve done a lot and learned a lot the previous day but forget all details… I need to get back in the habit of blogging more even if it’s just a single paragraph.

I had a nice Fourth of July extended weekend here in Ames. The REU had Thursday and Friday off. I got more time to relax. However, given the fact that we have our Deeper Dive MCAs due Tuesday (tomorrow), time was limited to complete it and I did come in Saturday afternoon. My DD team got the evaluation mode completed for the VRAC Lifeguarding simulation which is awesome. Right now, all that is left is to finalize the presentation, rehearse tomorrow morning, and we’ll be set for the real presentations in the afternoon.

Team Ballistics has gone their separate ways for a while now. Syema and Tiger are part of the Unity Shaders Deeper Dive while I was a part of Team VR. We’ve so been focused on our own MCA projects the past week as well as the one beforehand that we have not spent much time working on our own research project. We’re pretty behind on it in regards to writing the paper, although we’re on top of the coding for the most part. Thank goodness Tiger already has a draft of the research poster since it is due tomorrow. Syema and I just need to verify it with him, make some changes, and we’ll be good to go.

When it comes to normal life, I have gotten over that bump I felt last Monday. I got to spend time with the girls at their apartment and simply socialized for a couple of hours that Monday afternoon. I have visited them two more times since. Everyone rarely socializes anymore with people outside their own apartment on a regular day given the lack of extra-curricular activities and the increase amount in work. So, making time and visiting one another’s apartment is the easiest thing to do to spend time with people. It certainly has helped me a lot.

Ta-ta for now! More updates in the future.

What else is there to talk about? What has been on my mind these past couple of weeks? I haven’t written anything aside from the average recap posts which I would not describe as truly meaningful … I just simply don’t know what to blog about anymore… I keep putting it off too because that writer’s block comes into play. I see my peers (from both my research and deeper dive projects) working on the projects and I get some self-pressure to do the same. Sigh… whatever. Blog time is precious. It’s important. And I’m not going to ignore it any longer. I’ll simply put on my headphones and reflect…

I didn’t have a good end of the week last week, specifically, Thursday and Friday. Mentioning all the details would take an extremely long time, time of which I don’t wish to spend here in VRAC when I should be working on my other stuff. I just know I have to take care of it later…write in my journal or so for a couple of hours. I need to let out the pressure building up inside me… that unhealthy pressure. Stress and pressure is good, but not the one that makes you feel bad about yourself…

Maybe I need to loosen up more. I’m not as social as I was during the first 3 of weeks here at SPIRE… I’ve kind of unconsciously gone back in my shell… becoming lost in my thoughts. I simply don’t know what else to talk about with my peers during break times… either I’m caught up in my own thoughts about what I have to do which blocks me out, I don’t think my conversation topic will lead into anything new and insightful, or I simply can’t think of anything to say when I want to have a conversation. Something I do know for sure is that the novelty effect has worn off. I remember being so excited each day upon coming to “work” which didn’t feel like work… each day being a new opportunity to see my peers again and learn new skills in the four crash courses we had, but that excitement is pretty much gone. I’ve gotten used to things here. Mom, if you read this, it’s not depression. It’s just a phase I’m going through here entre otras cositas que tengo que trabajar. Oh and it doesn’t help that we’re done with pretty much afternoon activities as a group. They barely happen anymore. Those fun things I used to look forward to barely occur anymore and since it’s not mandatory, only the same people come and others don’t. Nowadays during the week, when we get home, we just lock ourselves up in each of our apartments and don’t interact. Sometimes at night us guys do watch a TV show for an hour or two (given that we have the blessing of a TV), but we don’t play Smash Bros anymore. That kind of died down. So yeah. As an ambivert, I feel like spending time with people in the afternoons used to help keep my energy up, keep me in the present and not be lost in technology and in my head as much. I miss those meaningful conversations with people, like getting to know the culture where people came from and their background.

So yeah. I feel this blog was pretty important. It started off from not knowing to say to becoming pretty productive. It helped shed light on some of the reasons things haven’t been the same for me. The schedule has changed. I wish to be more energetic again. I want to work on the DD and Ballistics projects with more vigor. Definitely need to reflect more later. I need to tap into my subconscious and let it speak. I need to work on myself before I can work on my work to the best of my ability again. God, please guide me these next few weeks and help me make the most of them.

It’s Friday. Yay. —Or so it would have been if it hadn’t been raining. The rain started the morning badly. I got my shoes and socks all wet on my way here. I had to hop over streams and puddles while navigating through parking lots because before I rode the bus to VRAC, I had to walk to one of the office buildings in front of my apartment in order to get my check. It didn’t help that I went to the wrong building first until I texted my internmates. It was then that one of them responded that it was the one further down the street— not the one directly in front of my dorm like I was told. This only led to more walking and getting my shoes even more wet. But hey! I finally got my check after 2+ weeks chilling in a file cabinet and I was able to make it to VRAC on time. So that’s a win.

At VRAC, we finally met in our deeper dive groups. I finally got the opportunity to study more in depth the field of technology I for a long time have been wanting to work with. Gaining the opportunity to work in the VR field was the main reason I applied to SPIRE and even though I did not originally get put in one of the two VR research project groups, I’m happy things came around and I get to work on VR regardless. —It’s not to say that I’m not happy working on the Ballistics project, which I am very content with by the way. Rather, I just always wished I could take a more active role in the VR field by working directly in it.

It’s the second day of Unity and it’s gone nice. It feels a little fast since we don’t have much knowledge of C# syntax in Unity so it’s kind of hard to write scripts. Aside from that it, it hasn’t been too bad. Also, we got the XML parse running in my group’s Ballistics code. Tiger got it actually. Now we can access a matrix’s dimensions from any binary file and don’t have to hard code in the values in order to get the data completely. Yay.

A nice relaxing weekend it was. I got to sleep in Saturday after not getting sufficient sleep the previous week. Later on at night, we round up a group and went to a hookah bar. It was my first time going to one and I had no idea what to expect, so I was a wee bit nervous but I enjoyed the experience. We had great conversations and we had a great time. I got to know the others more, listen to their crazy experiences, and watch the newbies failing to make smoke circles and make fish mouths. We stayed there for about an hour and a half before we left. We walked around the block exploring what stores there were in Campustown before stopping by an ice-cream store.

The next day, Fathers’ Day, I slept in again (having gone to sleep late once again). I ate brunch and then called my dad and had a conversation on the phone with him for an hour. Later on, I biked up north for about 20 minutes to reach a Catholic church I had never been to. I attended mass from 5-6 PM which was in Spanish, my first Spanish mass since I got to Iowa. Then I ate at Papa Johns nearby before biking all the way back to Frederick Hall. It was quite a workout but the exploration was quite nice.

Last week, we learned Maya. It was awesome–way better than Solidworks. Much more creative freedom. Now, this week we are working with Unity and taking the models we worked on in Maya and making them do cool stuff in Unity. I look forward to this next unit.

Yesterday, we got our first introduction to SolidWorks. So far, it’s been quite tedious to handle. It is definitely interesting as it has a bunch of uses and it looks really cool once you understand all the tools, but it has not gone well for me. There are so many buttons and places to click on the shape that it is all sooo confusing. Plus, the options change if the object is a 2D shape or 3D shape and if you do not click on the right option, the next steps might not appear. Oh and if you forget to exit the sketch mode, some options won’t appear and you can spend the next 10-15 minutes trying to figure out what they did not appear. There are so many intricacies with SolidWorks that sometimes the tutorial doesn’t help with even though it tries to be straightforward for the most part. I am not getting solid with SolidWorks. I’m still in the liquid phase slowly building my way up (or more accordingly, down) the solid phase. Regardless, it has been a positive experience overall.

Hey guys. The Ballistics team finally got a lead to work on. We now have an idea on what to go about doing. For the past week I’d say it was mostly focused on familiarizing yourself with the concepts of the characteristics of fired bullets, guns, and the scanning procedure as this information is fundamental to the algorithms we’re going to becoming up with in regards to determining what constitutes a good scan of a bullet and what doesn’t. Now our goal is to open the X3P, C++, etc. files on our computer so we can get an understanding of the pre-made C++ library for bullet scans created a couple of years ago. It is then that we will be able to use them to determine the number of missing values in a scan. Missing values occur when the light emitted by the scanner does not reach all the way down to the base of the bullet (the bullet is not completely round since it has high levels, low levels, and ridges). The anatomy of a bullet is complex. I might post a picture of one in the future. Anyways, there are many reasons the light does not go all the way down and being able to quantify what those reasons could be and have a program judge them requires very careful deliberation. The next step would be to calculate the number of missing values relative to the total number of values in the scan which would give us a percentage. Then we can use that percentage and establish a threshold for what percentage of missing values can there be before it stops being a good scan. But that’s later on.

That’s all for now guys…Hope the explanation was clear.

In the afternoon, we went Geocaching around a hiking trail and had a BBQ afterwards next to a lake. Geocaching is when you look for hidden objects people have left somewhere in public spaces usually in nature areas. It’s similar to treasure hunting. There is an app for this which in it holds the location of all the Geocache sites and by using your GPS location on your phone, you can look for those spots. The rule of thumb is that if you take the “treasure” from a spot, you have to replace it with one of your own.

Sadly, all the “treasure” we found was pretty much trash. There was a tire wrapped around a tree (that couldn’t even be removed), a chunk of rusty pipe, and a bench that worked like a swing (like the swings kids use at parks but instead of an individual seat, it was a mental bench people sit on at parks without the legs and it was attached via chains to the wooden support beams. The real treasure we got was all the views we got to see while we were walking. Down below are just some pictures we took.

After that we had a pleasant BBQ dinner. Overall, it was really nice to spend some quality time with my new friends. I really enjoyed the afternoon trip. 🙂

Today has been a pretty laid back day so far. This morning we got an introduction to C++. I took C++ for 2 semesters at my University in PR, so the review was too simple. But here at SPIRE-EIT, the C++ course is a crash course so it’s only going to get more intensive from here on out. It would serve to brush up on my C++ programming skills, as well as learn things I might have overlooked in then past or not understood well. I’m not too stressed out about it anymore. The grad student teaching it is really smart and there are other students here in the program with me who have taken C++ too. I can ask for their help too.

Even in the short time span we have been working in C++ ( learning Hello World, understanding basic syntax, learning how to print on a screen, commentating, and couple of other basic things), I have been able to see what good practices other CS students have developed from their programs in other Universities.

At lunch time we ate. But I also got to talk to my other peers and got some backstory into their lives. I learned how they got into Computer Science, and what twists and turns their lives took which led them get to where they are today. It’s kind of refreshing to know that I am not alone. My life has had its fair share of obstacles and events that have made my path not so straightforward. Seeing how others have overcome theirs and simply the fact that they’ve opened up about it helps me trust them better.

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Hey. I’m gonna be real on this post. This isn’t gonna be another of those lighthearted posts of what I did recently and how good it has been. I have a couple things I need to get off chest as they’ve been haunting me knawing at my insides these past two days. I must get them out. I can’t simply bury them within me or they’ll resurge later on causing more problems. They want to come out. So therefore, I will let them free. Here goes:

Right after lunch Friday, each SPIRE-EIT intern met with their team of mentors who are going to be helping and overseeing their group’sresearch projects. All the groups with their faculty and graduate students met in one conference room and the do-director of SPIRE-EIT and VRAC gave a really important presentation with the purpose of improving our teamwork in the long run.

One of the activities we did in the middle of the presentation were brainstorming in groups, fears/concerns each person has about research and sharing them. The other was reflecting about traits about ourselves we can’t change and others that we could. The purpose of the second one (if I really correctly) was to accept that there traits about ourselves that we cannot change that can affect how we behave.

So, since Friday’s meeting with all the groups talking about each person’s fears regarding their future experience with the project, I have come to realize my own. I’ve carried a lot more than just my luggage when I came here to Iowa. I’ve carried the baggage that lies within my heart.

My fears, my worries, my doubts are some of the things I’ve carried within me. You see, I am the only hispanic person here in SPIRE-EIT, and one of only 3 minorities. Although I am proud of my Hispanic roots as a Puerto Rican, I feel like being the only one here gives means like I have higher expectations. I know it’s not true, but that’s how I feel. This expection ties into another, albeit negative, reason that’s driving me to try my hardest.

This next reason is that I don’t want to fail my teammates in our research project. I am in the computer science field and I must represent that well. Plus, I don’t feel like I am fully prepared for the research project. I haven’t taken the full advantage of my education in PR, despite its limited resources in my university back home relative to most colleges in the US. And I’m not the that skilled in programming overall, which is I think is my biggest weakness and doubts I have on myself. I’m not confident in my skills as a programmer, despite it being an integral part of of a computer science degree. I’m worried this might set me and my team back, especially since I’m the the only CS major on it. I’ve placed these expectations on myself to do well because I don’t want to let my peers and faculty down, which are all really nice. I’ve been given so many opportunities here and I must pay it all back by being successful in the project. Failure is not an option for me…

So that’s what’s up. I’m in a tough predicament of self-pressure because of my racial identity and also because of my lack in confidence. The second reason is actually the biggest factor that’s holding me back.

—But on the bright side, I really like helping people and I’m really driven because I want to make an impact here. I want to leave SPIRE-EIT having made a difference and knowing that I will have helped future 3D scanning practices of bullets having become more easy which would save so much time and speed up the advancement of forensic science in regards to the identification of shot bullet characteristics. This hope is something I ride on.

I also want my peers to be happy, and this includes everyone, even my peers who are not in my research project group. I want to have influenced them for the better, even if it’s just a little bit and subtle. We’ve only got 9 more weeks here and that’s one of my goals I have here. Even if they forget me, when we go our separate ways and we head back to our homes in whatever part of the US they’re from, I only hope I served to make a difference in the time here, liking helping them become more open to sharing their feelings with others, which serves to foster communication and bonding. I hope my openness will help them see that. It’s one of the reasons I expose myself a lot (which is an accurate trait of the ENFJ’s in the “academically unsupported” Myers-Briggs test). It’s to help be themselves more.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. It’s pretty late in the morning (Sunday 2:24 AM) and I’ve got to get up at 9. Thanks for reading and I hope you’ve taken something away from this blog post. I’m just keeping it real. This is me. This is who I am. This is Emmanuelle.

Take care everyone. I’ll make more “real” posts in the future when I have the time and if I need to get something off my chest. I think I have expressed most of my thoughts and feelings and I’m more relaxed now.

I’ll work hard and do my best here at SPIRE all while having fun and helping others in the process. I will make the most of this opportunity. That I can say with certainty. Good night people. Until next time.

—Emman Out.

Hey everyone. My name is Emmanuelle Hernandez and I am interning the summer for the Ballistics research team in the SPIRE-EIT REU program here at ISU. I am from the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo and heading into my fourth year in my computer science bachelor’s program. This is my first REU experience and I am very excited to be here.

Virtual Reality has always been fascinating to me. Even when I was little when virtual reality tech had not existed yet — or even my knowledge of virtual reality for that matter — I had always been dreamed about being immersed an actual video game and feeling as if I was physically there. I had dreamed about lucid dreaming before and always wondered if there was a way to make it more realistic.

So upon finding out I was accepted to SPIRE-EIT I was ecstatic! It’s been an amazing 2 days so far (we had our first full day yesterday but didn’t start blogging until today, our second day). I look forward to the entire summer and I vow do make the most of the opportunities here and apply the utmost of my ability to my group’s research project.