Importance Of My Experience At Melbourne Planetarium

In my opinion, it is a memorable experience for me to complete my internship placement at the Melbourne Planetarium and it is also one of the correct decisions I have made to enhance my skills and employability. Unlike academic learning at the university, internship is a brand new experience, and there are also similarities observed between the academic studying and working as a professional – they both are requiring problem-solving and constantly learning. As I was working with my supervisors Dr. Tanya Hill and Dr. Kate Phillips, I have learned and developed valuable soft skills such as communication and organization skills. It also put my knowledges and skills learned at university to test at workplace, both computing skill and analyzing …show more content…
There is a possibility that people will not always work in their field of studies. In my case, the one-day experience at Melbourne Museum with Dr. Kate Phillips – who has a scientific background in genetic biology – is definitely eye-opening. In that afternoon, a brief research on Anthropocene exhibitions around the world was carried by us as Kate is proposing an Anthropocene-related exhibition to be open in the near future. I have zero background in human science, and always more interested in space rather than complicated human society. It was my first time to learn the basic concept of the Anthropocene, and it is truly different from the scientific study at the university. From my academic physics study, I am asked to learn the basic of different aspects of physics and brainstorm the all the possible formulas and concepts to understand and explain the physical phenomena taught in classes. I …show more content…
At the university, I learned basic Python to fulfill my curiosity of the elementary of computing. Later, as part of my study requirement, I also learn the basic of the Mathlab and algorithm. For my internship placement, my supervisor Dr. Tanya Hill had arranged a few projects and activities for me. One of my major role in the internship is to perform analysis on the visitor statistics of the Melbourne Planetarium for the last five years. When analyzing the data, I have learned a few useful Microsoft Excel skills from Tanya and online resource. For example: how to use conditional formatting over a range of data; how to write and create complicated functions and diagrams to perform the analysis of the data and represent the result. Also, another part of my internship is to learn how to code and program with the planetarium software system – DigitalSky 2, which contain a large collection of astronomical data sets and production tools to present creative and informative shows to the audiences. The software is simple to use and code with, and my basic background in computing that I learned at university provided excellent advantage in understanding the concept of this coding system effectively and faster. It is critical that I ought to be prepared for the digital age as other students, and solve the