I had been anxiously glancing at my inbox for an hour when the email arrived from Dr.

Emma Torro-Pastor,
one of my internship mentors: Hi, we have beam back on. If everything goes well we should have stable
beams in about 20 minutes. I closed my laptop and grabbed my ID card. Several minutes later, I arrived at
the security entrance to the ATLAS site, which houses the 7 kilotonne ATLAS detector, the largest volume
particle detector ever constructed.

The atmosphere in the control room was tense. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had tried and failed to
achieve stable beams several times that week, which meant no collisions and no data. My eyes were glued
to the live event displays, which, despite being blank save for the occasional cosmic ray, now showed that
the LHC had achieved stable beams. Several long minutes later, the displays lit up, showing that collisions
had begun. This is when the sheer enormity of the LHC hit home.

Despite studying the smallest components of our universe, there is nothing elementary about the LHC.
Inside, proton beams are accelerated to within 11 km/h of the speed of light, zipping around a 27 km ring
11245 times every second. In order to bend these beams, the LHC uses over 4.3 kilotonnes of
superconducting magnets cooled below 2 kelvin to avoid meltdown. When the magnets force the beams to
cross, about 1 billion collisions occur every second. The immense amount of energy generated condenses
into exotic particles which allow physicists to study the secrets of the cosmos. This cutting edge physics
fascinates me because it is humanitys quest to speak fluently the language of the universe. To delve into its
inner workings requires operating at regimes that are inherently unimaginable; physics is the attempt to
bridge the inconceivable scale and counterintuitive nature of the universe and put it into a form we can
understand: mathematics. Equations like the Standard Model - an unassuming name for our theory of almost
everything - neatly sum up our current understanding of the universe in comparatively simple maths. Physics,
in all its complexity, hides elegance and symmetry in a way I find stunning.

I am the only aspiring particle physicist at my high school. While I have always loved science, my obsession
with particle physics began with a 6th grade project on the history of particle accelerators, including the LHC;
I have wanted to work at CERN ever since. Having completed every advanced math and science class
offered at my high school, I sought out new learning environments and peer groups via summer programs
and college-level classes. I spent three summers at the Center for Bright Kids, learning about general
physics, computational physics, and quantum mechanics. Last summer, I participated in research into the
field emissions of porous silicon in conjunction with Sandia National Laboratories and Fort Lewis College.
Throughout these experiences, I have found it fulfilling to work with others with similar abilities, passions, and
ambitions.

My internship at CERNs ATLAS detector was the culmination of my skills to date and an immense source of
motivation for my future studies. At CERN, I worked with the University of Washingtons ATLAS team,
searching for hypothetical long-lived particles that could hint at the identity of dark matter, supersymmetry,
and other physics beyond the Standard Model. My role mainly consisted of researching and implementing
new triggers to remove beam-induced background events that closely mimicked Monte Carlo signal events
for displaced vertices. While my time at CERN was shorter than I would have liked, in the future I hope to
work, study, and learn alongside incredibly driven and involved colleagues like Dr. Torro-Pastor.

Throughout my education, I have focused on learning the fundamental language of the universe through
mathematics and physics. I hope that by continuing my studies at the collegiate level that I will move ever
closer to the impossible goal of fluency.