The internship assignment was one we were told about during our 10th grade year. The goal of the assignment was too find something that you were interested in or that you may want to pursue in the future as a career. Then find a location or company that would let you internship with them so that you could learn a little bit more about that career. This was very helpful; because it lets, you really see what the job you might want to do would be like. It helps you decide whether you actually want to pursue that specific career, or to move onto something else. For my specific internship assignment, I contacted the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and the Gaming Research and Integrated Learning Lab (GRILL). I spent most of my internship days at the GRILL; however, I saw some very interesting things with AFRL, like the sensor tower. I learned many things from both organizations, but I am still not one hundred percent sure what I want to do in the future. Currently I am just focusing on finishing my last year of high school, applying to colleges, and hopefully when I am taking my general education classes in college I get a good idea of what I would like to do for a career.

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Some of the specific equipment I used during my internship was the sensor tower, virtual reality headset, unreal engine, VR go-kart, flying simulation, and green screen. The sensor tower is what AFRL uses to monitor planes when they have an ongoing test. The structure is a big tower with windows at the top allowing you to see in three hundred and sixty degrees. Up there they have a big camera used for monitoring a plane and on that camera, they have tools and devices. Those tools and devices can tell you how fast the plane is moving, what kind of plane it is, and much more. During my stay at the GRILL, I used unreal engine almost every day. Unreal is a software on a computer that allows you to create games from scratch. For example, I created a virtual reality (VR) goalie training game, so when someone puts on the VR headset and picks up the controls, soccer balls will fly towards the net and you will have to block them. I even created a physical map for the player to be standing on and be able to look around at the decorations. I also was able to drive a VR go-kart at the GRILL. The way this works is, you sit in a real go-kart and put on a VR headset, which shows you the view of a go-kart and a racetrack from first person. When you pushed the real life go-kart pedal, it would actually move it in the game, and when you moved the steering wheel to the right or left, the go-kart in the game would right or left. The GRILL has this setup to show people how they can integrate VR headsets into simulations to help people train for something.

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The biggest challenge that happened to me during my internship was the blueprints with my VR goalie game. When I first started making my game I was not experienced with unreal so learning how to work the program took a bit of time. I learned a little about blueprints (the coding software for unreal) at the start from Jack. I started to work on the blueprints and I would run into many problems, like how to code this a certain way, or the language needed to make something work. I overcame this by working with Jack, and having him help me with what I needed. I would tell him what I wanted to happen in the game and he would teach me the language, and how to connect the code to make sure that it would all work without problems.

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This internship experience has helped me really figure out if I want to do this kind of work or not. Before doing this assignment, I was unsure whether I actually wanted to do Air Force research, or integrate gaming to help people. From this, I have decided that I would not mind doing either of these things. I thought that everything I was learning was very interesting and useful for my future. The things they are working on as well are also very important for the future. This is the future for pilots in training that need to use simulations in order to be able to fly, for improved understanding on the ways our planes work, and fly, and for many other real world problems.

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Personally, I really enjoyed my internship, and I learned very much. This could definitely be a career choice for me in the future, however I would still like to take my time and really figure out what will make me happy throughout my life. I would definitely suggest job shadowing, or doing an internship with either of these organizations, as you will learn so much.