As my time in LA for the Summer concluded, the Amerigo Vespucci came to visit! This is a beautiful Italian boat that is making a world tour. My friend and I went to see it along with its exhibits, band, and air show! Some photos are below 🙂
Only two more posts to conclude my time in LA…..one last photo dump of some amazing things that I did towards the end of the Summer and another with a bit more about my job at SpaceX while I was there. Stay tuned!
After my family visited me in LA this past Summer, my boyfriend came to visit! He also came last year while I was working in LA for SpaceX but had not been on a tour yet. This time, we were able to arrange one! Please enjoy the plethora of pictures from that visitation trip 😀
This (as you can see) is also the time that I started my food blog on Instagram @thehungryducky full of restaurant reviews in Los Angeles, Daytona Beach, and St. Augustine areas.
After my boyfriend visited, the world-renown Italian boat came to visit LA with an entire airshow…..but that’s for the next post.
As I write this, my family, friends, and I are preparing for Hurricane Milton. My heart goes out to all those who are and will be affected by this hurricane. Please stay safe this week.
After the JPL tour, some of my family was in town for a while for my cousin’s wedding!
I took my extended family to a bunch of different place for food and desserts including Pigya for a really nice Korean BBQ set menu experience, Oakobing for Korean shaved ice, and Melo Melo for coconut pudding! I also got to give my parents and my grandmother a tour of SpaceX complete with pictures at the rocket booster! As an intern, SpaceX allows you to give a few tours to a limited amount of close family and friends. After my family was done with their visit, my boyfriend also visited with his own SpaceX tour…..but that is for yet another post. 🙂
While in LA, I attended the Space Foundation’s New Generation Space Leaders: Dare Mighty Things Together Event at JPL. I got to meet and talk with some amazing people in the aerospace industry from across the country.
For the first half of the event, our group was taken on a tour around JPL, and I loved EVERY SECOND of it. They do similar tours for the public. If you are ever in the area, I highly recommend trying to book one. It was also great to see how much they encouraged photography throughout the tour!
Before I left to my internship, I spent some time with family. There are two things that we did in the Northeast Florida area that were super fun, and I highly recommend checking them out.
First, my parents, my boyfriend, and I went to a placed called All Fired Up in Winter Park (North Orlando sort of area) where we painted our own pottery! My parents and I painted a set of penguins to put in our garden. My boyfriend and I painted a cute little vase that we will plant sage in for our kitchen.
Secondly, my parents and I went shark teeth hunting! I also collected some cool shells and other types of fossils. In the Northeast Florida area, Ponte Vedra beach is an amazing hot spot for picking up shark teeth. You can walk onto the beach for free from the neighborhoods and find a good amount within an hour. This is a great idea for a date or just a nice vacation from the chaos of campus. There are also some amazing restaurants that you can walk into from the beach.
After all of these fun activities, I flew to LA for my fourth SpaceX internship! But more on that in the next post 🙂
In late May, I flew to LA to start my fourth Summer there. I worked with the Falcon Engineering and Product Management team based in Hawthorne, California as a Graduate Engineer which essentially means that I was an intern with a degree that was treated as a full-time employee with a salary. Here are some bullet points about my work there:
For this internship, I was able to obtain credits towards my graduate degree. I highly recommend that people talk to Career Services about this since it can save time and money.
Some fun things that I did while I was there include getting food with my California bestie, Alexa, who is a technician at Apex Technologies (she is really cool). She has also worked at SpaceX and Bombardier!!
We love discovering new places that serve things like a fluffy mango cake, dragonfruit boba, Korean cold noodles, or pork katsu like you see below. I also wandered around Manhattan Beach which has amazing weather, cute bookshops/stores, wonderful cafes, and more. The last picture is a duck that hangs out at the LA Fitness I go to there.
While in LA, I also tried to attend some networking events including one that involved a tour of JPL!! This was truly an amazing life experience that I shall show more of on my next post. 🙂
After graduation, I stayed around Daytona for a few more days to attend Rockville 2024 with my dad and boyfriend!! This is a rock festival that happened at the Daytona Speedway with tons of my favorite bands all day for FOUR DAYS including Limp Bizkit, Falling In Reverse, and Evanescence. Had the time of my life and highly recommend to anyone in the area.
Great beginning of Summer activity!
It was the end of a decade, but the start of an age
My time at ERAU as an undergraduate student came to a close last May. Throughout these four years I have made many lifelong friends and grew both academically and personally. I am grateful to all who supported me as well as those that made me stronger.
Next Chapter…
On to the Summer and my last year here at ERAU! During the Summer I completed my fourth round of the Summer internship program at SpaceX in Hawthorne, CA as a Graduate Engineer. This academic year, I will be finishing my graduate degree in Systems Engineering. But those are topics for other posts….. 🙂
So, remember that good news I mentioned in my last blog post? Well, it’s finally time to spill! We just successfully launched our satellite at the company I work for in Merritt Island, Florida! It was a super exciting moment in my career that I will never forget. I work in the Mission Control Center for Sidus Space as a flight controller. My job is to perform satellite operations for LizzieSat-1. I knew all of the hard work would pay off!
At the end of March, I got the incredible opportunity to attend Women in Aviation 2024 and stay in Orlando, Florida! I met some stellar women and made so many new friends! A huge thanks to Gaetz Aerospace Institute for being in my life since I was in high school and for funding this trip for me! The view from my hotel was amazing, the food was delicious, and the experiences unforgettable. It was like a mini vacation, only better!
I met so many people, including Dr. Sian Proctor, a commercial astronaut, professor of geology, artist, author, and science communicator! I saw many faculty, professors, and friends there too!
Having a huge background in aviation and aerospace definitely benefited me during my career and education. As a sophomore in high school, I was able to take Embry-Riddle classes including Private
Pilot Ground School, UAS Flight Mapping and Cross Country, and several meteorology courses through Gaetz Aerospace Institute. It made me even more encouraged to pursue my PPL (something that has been on my to-do list for a while now)!
After the conference during the first week of April, I managed to book a Disney vacation with my friends! It was so awesome to visit Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Star Wars Galaxy Edge. We all dressed up and went to the park for the whole day! Who doesn’t get a bachelor’s in something space related and NOT love Star Wars?!
Did everyone get a chance to see that solar eclipse in April?! It was so awesome to be able to take photographs of the moon covering the sun. I will always remember that moment and where I was (with friends and family)!
I am happy to announce I successfully completed the Spring 2024 NASA L’Space NPWEE Proposal Writing Academy. It was an amazing experience to serve as the Principal Investigator of team #28 and it taught me so much I didn’t know about proposal writing. I even got the opportunity to sit on a review panel, work with modeling software (NX), and earn a skill badge! This summer, I plan to continue to work with that modeling software and become certified in NX. Thank you to all of my mentors and the incredible team at NASA L’Space and Arizona State University that make this happen for students like me.
Lastly, I just watched my fiancé graduate from Daytona State College this past week! I am so incredibly proud of him and his journey so far. I am fortunate that we both get to attend higher education institutions and pursue our biggest dreams together. Next stop for him: UCF’s Computer Science program!
This semester was definitely one for the books! I attended 2 conferences, finished another semester of my master’s programs, got to see a solar eclipse, and get to continue to work my dream job! I hope my fall semester is just as opportunistic and action-packed.
Ciao for now!
The last day of classes has come and gone. As you’re reading this, the last assignment of my undergraduate degree has been completed and I’m just waiting for my grades to come in. That’s absolutely crazy for me to think about- I don’t feel like I’ve been here for even a year, much less four years. But here we go on the last and final Riddle Rewind. (Freshman, sophomore, and junior year can be found at the links!)
The WAMP O-Week Luncheon!
The timing of my internship unfortunately didn’t work with O-Week, so I couldn’t be on the Orientation Team this year. However, I did make it back in time for a Women’s Ambassador Mentoring Program luncheon for all of the female freshmen, and I was given the opportunity to speak. It was a great experience!
WAMP Ice Cream Social!
WAMP events in the fall were a lot of fun- and this one had FREE ice cream! I couldn’t complain about that. 🙂
My Women’s Ambassador trip to Pittsburgh!
I had never been to Pittsburgh before, but it was definitely a cool experience. While I was there I also got to meet some cute cats in a cat cafe!
Adopting my kitten, Radar!
I adopted a five-month-old kitten named Radar back in late September after moving off campus and it’s one of the best things that I’ve done. He is the sweetest cat ever- and my roommates love him, too! He recently celebrated his first birthday, and it’s been a lot of fun to watch him grow.
My Women’s Ambassador trip to Washington, D.C., and NYC!
Visiting D.C. and New York City was a whole lot of fun! It rained on my first night in NYC, but that didn’t stop me from having some late-night adventures.
Open House 2023!
Open House is always a lot of fun. There are always new people to meet and new things to learn! I volunteered for both the Women’s Ambassadors and Aerospace Engineering Student Advisory Board.
Flying Into Finals Week!
Pun… ha ha. Finals week isn’t fun, but going for a short flight in a Cessna was a lot of fun and a great way to relax before the stress of finals week hit.
The Rolex 24 (and the Roar Before the 24)!
I’ve never been to a car race before, but I thought that attending the Rolex 24 was a lot of fun. It’s definitely something to experience at least once if you’re here.
Touch-N-Go Comedy Night!
For Blue and Gold Week, comedian Ryan Kelly came to campus and gave an amazing one-hour comedy show. I laughed- a lot.
My Women’s Ambassador trip to Boston and Hartford!
Don’t get me wrong- I was SOOOO cold!! However, it was a lot of fun to walk around one of the United States’ oldest and most historic cities when I had the chance.
Speaking about internships at the WAI Conference!!
I never thought I’d be speaking at a conference as an undergraduate student, but I proved myself wrong. The Women in Aviation conference was a lot of fun, and being a speaker was an experience that I’ll never forget.
My last trip was to Washington, D.C., and Richmond, VA. I’d never been to Richmond, but I LOVE D.C., so I was happy to go. On the way back, I did get stuck by myself on an unexpected overnight in Charlotte- but hey, it was a new adventure.
Preview Day 2024!
Just like for Open House, I volunteered for the Women’s Ambassadors and Aerospace Engineering Student Advisory Board. Preview Day was also a lot of fun- over the Friday and Saturday that I worked, I got to meet a lot of new people who may be at ERAU this fall!
I love airshows- so much so that I went to the Orlando Airshow (aka the Air Dot Show tour) the weekend after Sun n’ Fun. Airshows are a great opportunity for me to see aerospace in action- plus, just being around giant airplanes is cool. When I graduate, I’ll be working as a Space Systems Engineer, but still- airplanes are cool. I plan to go to as many airshows as I can even after I graduate!
It’s been a lot of fun blogging these past four years- it’s made me get out and adventure more than I would’ve without. This is my last post as an ERAU student, but who knows- maybe one day I’ll come back and write about what my new life looks like after Embry-Riddle. I’m really thankful for every single opportunity I’ve had, and I hope you’ve found my posts interesting. See you in the skies! -Carly
