Hello everyone! I seem to be a bit late in posting my first blog. Not to worry, I took care of all my packing and travel specifics before handling this. Well, today was Commencement at Emory and tomorrow I leave for Munich. It's a pretty small time frame, I must say (although I wasn't one of the graduates, so I actually wasn't that pressed for time). I will arrive in Munich Wed. morning and then travel to the research institute which, as it turns out, is only about 10 km from the Munich airport, so I shouldn't have any trouble getting there. I don't start my internship until the following monday, so I have a few days to settle in. I will be working from about mid May until the beginning of August and I will be doing physics research investigating quantum phase transitions in certain superconducting alloys.
As complicated as that all might sound I'm really mainly helping my international mentor, Stefan Legl, install a vibrating coil magnetometer into our freezing chamber (what he calls "the fridge") and then using the thing to measure the "incommensurate spin" of our samples to help us see how the magnetization of the alloy changes under different conditions. (or something like that).
For some reason, I'm not worried about the Al Qaeda. What I'm most worried about is making a friendly impression on my advisor. We've kept in contact through email over the spring, but we've never actually spoken to each other. I don't know that much about him and my communication with him has stayed on the formal side, even to the point where I've wondered if sometimes I've worded my emails in a way that makes me sound rude. I feel that if he begins thinking I'm rude, then it will be an uphill battle for us to work more closely together. Oh well, we'll find out tomorrow! (well, after a 10 hour flight that begins tomorrow)