Hi blog! First week in Iowa has been so much fun. This week was pretty chill in terms of workload, which gave us more time to get adjusted to the campus and the people. Going into this experience, I didn’t want to put any expectations on how well I would get along with the other interns because we all come from such different backgrounds, but I will say that I wasn’t expecting to find myself in a group of such amazing people who all get along so well so fast. We’ve been keeping busy with some intense game nights, volleyball games outside, bike rides, group dinners, an escape room, and a (questionable) show. Today we started covering C++ material. I’ve spent a couple semesters working with C++ back at my university, so this was a good review of some things. As for Iowa, it could be worse. I don’t think it deserves so much hate (hot take maybe), but I’m also from the Midwest, so I guess I’m used to the flat fields, the cows, and the quietness. Last week, we were able to get some bikes to use for the summer in exchange for working at the bike shop. It’s been fun to roam around Ames on them. Yesterday, a few of us went out for a ride and somehow ended up walking through twigs and water in the middle of the woods…we did end up finding a nice trail that went around a lake though, so that was good redemption for our navigator. I’ll insert some pictures. I might as well use this space to document the Curiosity EEG team’s beautiful and incredible invention for Tre. Our task during this team building activity was to come up with a solution to help Tre manage his difficulty focusing in class. We decided to make glasses that track your eye movement so that every time your eyes drift from the board, your vision is blocked for a second to reset your focus. Yeah maybe the wire was a bit pokey and the glasses only fit his head if we held them up, but it was the effort that matters in my opinion. I’ve added some pictures of the live demonstration of our prototype on Tre.