Category: Everything

Now that I’ve finished my time at Ames, and I’m on a train for three-and-a-half days, with lots of books and Microsoft Word and no internet connection (bliss – not because I don’t like the internet, I do, but sometimes it’s nice to have the kind of break where it’s not just you saying ‘I’mma buzz off the net for a while now folks’ but actually having. no. connection), I’m going to do something I’ve planned to do for pretty much this whole time. Because I benefited (hugely) from other former interns’ advice and comments before I came, I want to pay that forward.

So this post is a funny one, with recommended approaches as follows – if you are

• one of my regular people, I hope you will find this amusing.
• a future intern at Ames, I hope you will take this as stuff I would have found helpful to have read back in May, and you may or may not get some use for.
• someone responsible for some aspect of interns, Ames, or interns at Ames, I hope you will take this as a look at difficult and awesome things I encountered, and as an attempt to give future interns an even better experience than I had (and honey, I had a great time.)
• none of these things, I’m not sure how you got here, but welcome! you may find other posts more interesting, because this one’s kind of a wrap-up.

And so, without further ado, here I go with my first listicle.

Stuff about being a Kiwi going to America for the first time

• The chit-chat the border agents do is border screening, on the principle that people telling the truth about where they’ve come from and what they’re doing in America can be relaxed and answer readily, and people lying have a harder time. They’re not trick questions. Getting-on-the-airplane security is intense. (I’m professionally disgusted with the explosives-swabbing gear used at airports, but that’s another story.) Getting-off-the-airplane customs/biosecurity is… not.
• Bring more American cash than you think you will need. I came over with about USD60 in cash and a couple hundred on my Travelex card, and that lasted about a fortnight before I needed to top up either. ATM fees are vicious, and most stores don’t know what you mean when you say ‘can I have cash out up to $X’, but Target does.
• They don’t say EFTPOS over here. They call it a bunch of other sensible and less-sensible things.
• I used Travelex Money Card as a debit card – it behaves like a MasterCard (because it is), it’s been accepted everywhere except Costco (which only takes a kind of card I didn’t have), and that one upscale winery, and it’s a littttttle eccentric about whether it will require a signature, a PIN, ID, or none of the above. It takes about two weeks between ordering the card and getting it, so allow three to save yourself hanging around outside Travelex the day before you fly the country. Not fun. Topping up by ‘credit card’ takes a 1.8% fee. Topping up by ‘bill payment’ (bank transfer) takes no fee but can be up to a week between topping up and funds being available. Plan ahead. Their customer service has a US number, and is generally very helpful and good at explaining things.
• Everyone talks like a movie. Everyone will be able to hear your accent. Some of them will even be able to tell it apart from an Australian accent. Talking to other Kiwis (or Australians in a pinch) is a tremendous relief after about a week.
• Americans do not use dysphemism as a figure of speech, and (to us) sound a lot peppier and chirpier and more upbeat than they feel. To translate, this chart gives you a rough idea.

• In the Bay Area, people will strike up random conversations with strangers. Do not be alarmed, although it is pretty weird and alarming; they’re just being friendly.
• Americans drive on the wrong (starboard) side of the road, and have a delightful rule where if the light for ahead is red, and the way is clear, you may make a right turn on a red light. The traffic light phases are very long and I have only seen one roundabout, which was made redundant by also having traffic lights on it. They love their traffic lights and stop signs here. Pedestrian crossings do not all make noise, and the ones that do, do not all make the same noise. Keep your eyes on the light or you will miss it.
• Safeway is basically New World; ask for a rewards card, it saved me a couple hundred dollars over three months. Target is Kmart. Kmart is not Kmart. Costco is Gilmours. Trader Joe’s is good for weird/organic/hipster food but not for regular groceries.
• Mailing a postcard or letter home costs USD1.15 and takes three to four weeks. USPS does not typically write the values on the stamps. (The US Mint does not typically write the values on the coins either…’one dime’. Please.)
• Sales tax is not included and varies depending on what you’re buying, from whom, and where you are. I operated on the rough rule of thumb that the tax on taxable items would be about fifteen percent, and was usually pleasantly surprised. In California, fresh or canned fruits, legumes, and vegetables, milk, ordinary bread, and peanut butter/jelly (which, gross)/apple butter (which, divine) do not attract tax. Sweets, prepared foods, snackfood, and fizzy drink do, even if it’s sugarfree fizzy drink. The less tax shows on your grocery receipt, the better you’re eating.

Stuff about being a Kiwi interning at NASA

• Imposter syndrome is real, especially after you get to NASA and realize you’re in with a bunch of amazingly awesome people. Remember the multi-stage selection process you just went through, and chill. If you didn’t deserve to be here, you would not be here.
• Enthusiastically and gratefully accept every offer to ‘introduce you to so-and-so’ you get, and look around to see if there are any research projects going on that you’re interested in. People love to answer questions about their work, and you get three months with an email address that most people will actually respond to. Do not waste this.
• When you get access to the NASA network, actually read the centerwide emails instead of deleting them – free lectures by visiting speakers? tours of facilities? science-fiction book club? help out on a NASA outreach trip? yes please.
• Don’t be afraid to ask questions – of the intern coordinator at your center, of your supervisor, of your contact at the New Zealand Space Agency. There is such a thing as a dumb question, but in my experience it’s ‘do photons have rest mass’, and that only applies if you’re asking someone whose entire life work is apparently based on the premise that they don’t.
• You may or may not have a hard time getting extensions/time off from your uni. The magic word is ‘NASA’, the point you’re trying to make is that giving you three months off yields excellent publicity for the university, and in my experience, going through your school rather than central administration gets better results.
• MBIE is a government agency, so reimbursements and information and answers to questions can take a while to come through. Be patient, it’ll happen. Last-minute flight bookings and emergency visa appointments are things that private citizens can’t usually do, but government agencies can.
• Do take the opportunity to explore America a bit if you can afford it – I’m writing this on a train, between Utah and Nevada, on my way to spend a week at the Smithsonian, and publishing it from my hotel room five minutes’ walk from the Capitol – more about that later. A standard J-1 visa gives you thirty days after the end of your internship.

Stuff about living at Ames

• You’ll probably end up in the NASA Exchange Lodge. To repeat the counsel of That Girl At NASA, you want to be in one of the 583 blocks, and to elaborate on it, you want to be in block B, because the kitchen is better equipped and it’s closer to the laundry and the vending machines.
• If you can’t personally afford to pay the extra to have your own room, you will have a roommate. I recommend asking for an American, because it gets you out of the international-intern ghetto, so you’re among Americans in America, who have a better shot at understanding how things work.
• There is one kitchen in each block of 75 rooms, which is more-or-less one kitchen to 100 people when the Lodge is full. Meal-prepping, cooking at funny hours, and owning your own measuring cup and knife is recommended. Clean up after yourself, and if you don’t want to catch something nasty, probably before yourself too.
• There is one laundry. Full stop. Be prepared to use this at funny hours too. My roommate preferred to do laundry sorta 2130-2330; I preferred either very early evening or very early on weekend mornings. We both usually hit quiet times.
• Lodge rooms come with various useful things. A fridge – this is residential-sized, so you won’t have to rely too much on shelf-stable foods and you can have vegetables and milk and stuff. A microwave – bring a microwave cookbook or at least know how to use the thing, because you won’t want to try and cook in the kitchen every night. A coffee maker – this is supposed to be for drip coffee, but in the absence of a kettle (which are rare and peculiar here), it will also brew a decent cup of gumboot tea, or get the maximum tea-ness out of a peppermint tea bag (the entire coffee-maker pot out of one tea bag), and you can make ramen noodles in it as well. The Lodge is old Army housing and looks like it – bring pictures and blu-tac – but there’s plenty of storage space (two or in some rooms three massive lockable metal wardrobes – and yes, the top compartment opens too – plus some mixture of chests-of-drawers, desks, and bureaus), and if you and your roommate are both even moderately tidy you’ll be fine.
• Cleaning staff come through about twice a week and clean the room and change the sheets and bring more coffee sachets and soap and shampoo. One caveat: if you have, say, a rumpty-looking reusable coffee filter, or a Pepsi bottle you’re using as a water bottle, or a reusable Trader Joe’s bag, or basically anything that looks like it might be rubbish but you’d like to keep it, make a note of when cleaning day is and put these things away in a drawer. The staff are very helpful and efficient about cleaning away rubbish.
• No need to pack soap or shampoo unless you actively loathe the scent of lemongrass – my immune system gets touchy about some scented soaps, so I packed stuff I knew I could use, but if you don’t have that issue, save yourself the luggage weight!
• The convenience store on site is a litttttttle overpriced for most things, but not for icecream or beer or Mexican coke. It’s not open weekends.
• Fortuna Market is about a mile down the road, is open weekends, and carries most of the groceries you’ll actually need. Also mazapan, which is Mexican peanut marzipan and is the most divine stuff. Safeway is two miles away.

Stuff about working at Ames

• Unless you get a six-month trip like the Portuguese government manages to swing, you will leave feeling like you haven’t accomplished very much and if only I had three more weeks. This is fine and normal and the NASA mentors know it. Do as much as you can, and don’t sweat about what you can’t.
• ‘Be your professional self’ still means ‘be yourself’. For me on the everyday that meant ‘tone down the haircut, leave the t-shirts with niche jokes at home, and would it kill you to wear leather boots instead of sneakers once in a while’. The fact that my everyday gear often includes waistcoats and neckties over t-shirts anyway helped. Basically check out what your supervisor and their postdoc/s wear, and aim for something between the two. My supervisor’s group has an Australian postdoc and was already a little inured to Antipodean humor, which was great for me.
• If you work in a lab – at all, ever – I hope you packed long pants and closed shoes. NASA isn’t not as uptight about lab coats as Kiwi university chem and bio labs, but they do insist on long pants. Imagine my delight in a California summer.
• I can’t be super-specific here because your experience working at Ames will depend on what you’re doing, who you’re doing it with, and where you’re working.

That was pretty much all I can think of to say, but like, if you’re in the same boat I was back in May and there’s something I haven’t covered that you desperately want to know, flick me a message on the contact form.

Thanks for reading.
MTFBWY.