Set 1

I chose this topic because, from a young age, I have been interested in Meteorology. I have always been really attached to the weather, studying upcoming forecasts and what has been happening, for example, the different clouds and weather events. I am unsure what caused me to start liking Meterolology, but I loved it and watching cool weather events like rainbows and ground-lighting strikes. I decided to use this for my senior project because I have some background in the field, and because it's a possible career choice, I chose meteorology as my topic so I can further my skills in that area. While I am not a professional at determining weather events, I am increasingly interested in the field, even getting complex weather apps such as Radarscope. I want to learn how to directly recognize certain weather events, and point out exactly when and where they are happening, by using my eyes but also using a radar. I plan to learn more about Meteorology and weather events by studying them during this Senior project. I also hope to lock in what I want to be when I grow up and get more development into that from this experience. Below, I will show an image of some weather events I have recorded in past years. While these are only 3 of the events I captured, I have captured many more images than this, but these are some cooler ones. All of this showcases how much I am interested in Meteorology. 

One strength that I bring to this experience is my overall experience with looking at meteorology events. I have watched videos of people doing storm-related tasks like storm chasing. I watch these kinds of streams and videos pretty often on YouTube, showing that I also have a passion for this topic and a decent amount of knowledge. I have heard certain terms and learned how to use certain items like a radar. However, I am still not super developed with exactly how to spot everything, especially with how complex radar software is. I recently learned how to spot a tornado using a velocity radar map, but that does not mean I know everything about storms or Meteorology. This can be a weakness, as I have not fully dug deep into the field. Another strength that will help me is my ability to learn, I love to learn stuff, even if it's just random numbers and how to say them, I just like learning. This can be a benefit when doing something like an Internship because I will be willing to learn and gain new knowledge from my experience. Another weakness is that I do not know exactly what I want to be when I grow up, as Meteorology is just my top option, but I have other options, such as Astronomy. And, even if I did go into Meteorology, I do not know in exactly what way as well, because Meteorology can branch into many different sectors, for example; I could be a storm chaser, or a science studies or a person, or the news. Also, I do not know exactly where I want to go to college as well, so I have to use some time to look into colleges as well. So, I need to use this summer and my strengths to research and learn more about what field and college I want to go to with my mentors, fully develop my skills and understanding, and further my future. I have contacted my mentors, so I am ready to learn more information I can use in the future! As long as I don't panic and I take feedback from my mentors, I believe that I will be able to learn and get into a great career path!

This just shows that I have contacted a decent bit of people and have talked to some of them as well. It also shows the progress I have made in contacting people. The first image was when I first started whereas the 2nd image is at the time of writing. 

I started off by contacting a few people that was in Virginia and did internship and community service, but I was not getting a lot of responses. I started sending out more contacts to more people but I was not getting responses from anyone. I eventually did get a response from 2 people at UVA, but all they said was that they would pass the word along, which made me not too hopeful, but more hopeful than I was. I was eventually contacted back by someone at NOAA, who is trying to get me a spot there still, which is very good. I had to eventually contact more people, even going into people at the news stations; while I do not want to work at a news station, they will still have some more knowledge than me and can help me overall. But, with a lot of these people not responding, it doesn't give me hope, but I always have hope that someone will respond and I will be able to get a great internship. I will continue further finding more contacts so that I will be able to finally get someone that I can work with. At the same time as starting this project, I also started looking into weather apps such as RadarScope, because being even more developed into Meteorology before doing my internship will help as well. I want to have a basic understanding of Atmospheric Sciences before I go to an intern, to try and make their job a little easier for helping me.