Today is my last day at the Allen Institute.
It was just 10 weeks ago that I had walked off the plane at SeaTac airport and thought, “Wow, it’s so green here! And the air feels so oddly…clean.” It was my first time in Seattle, and my first time living away from my hometown. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and the farthest I’ve ever lived from my parents was a 25-minute drive — at UCLA, where I’m now in my senior year as a microbiology major.
This summer, I’ve been an editorial intern at the Allen Institute, writing science stories about the Institute’s fascinating research. From a feature article on aging to a story about exercise as medicine for the mind to a podcast on bumblebee science, I’ve explored various genres of writing and got an inside view of careers in communications. But out of all the stories I’ve written here so far, I was the most nervous about this one.
As a science writer, I’m used to writing about science. But this time I’ll be introducing the people behind it. I was not the only one who joined the Allen Institute this summer. Alongside me, 22 additional amazing interns came here to be at the frontiers of research. It’s the Institute’s largest cohort yet, and the first on-site group of interns since 2019, before the pandemic shuttered labs and offices.
