I have experienced a little bit of unclear instructions and ambiguity in the workplace. I have been given a few tasks where I was not sure what was being asked of me and I felt awkward asking for instructions. In these situations I usually first try to figure it out myself, then if I can not figure it out I will ask my fellow interns to see if they know. Lastly, if they don’t know I ask for more clarification from the person who gave me the assignment. After having had this happen a few times I now make sure that I ask as many questions necessary at the beginning of the assignment before proceeding. This way it helps avoid these situations. A big fortunate part of my work environment is that all my coworkers are very understanding and they help me through all my work that I need help with. They are constantly telling me to reach out to them for questions. I feel very welcome at RCSI and I love the people I work with. Having a friendly work environment has helped me thrive and it is good that I learned this now. I will use this when I get a job in the future. I will put an emphasis on personal relations in any job that I do because I know how helpful it is. I realize that asking for help and being humble is the best way to learn in any environment, let alone the work place.

This week overall has been a blast. I feel like I’m hitting my stride at work. The first couple of weeks there was a little bit of trouble with getting a sufficient amount of work. This left me feeling a bit bored and useless. I want to learn from work and not getting any doesn’t help. So this week was especially nice getting some work to do. I have been getting and processing expense reports, invoices, payment request forms, and all other types of work. Within the next week they will be switching us interns up so I will no longer be working in accounts payable. I will be working in the finance department soon working on payroll. It is nice to get to see a bunch of different departments so that I can decide what I want to pursue as a job in the future.

Outside of work, I visited a small town outside of Dublin called Howth. It is a port and has a beautiful cliff walk. There are so many amazing sights to see out there it is quite astounding. While I was out there I got a lot of great photos of the breathtaking cliffs. It was quite the hike but well worth it if you are looking for some scenery outside of Dublin. Going off trail is especially fun if you are a big hiker. I can also now say that I have set foot in the Irish Sea. I was also extraordinarily lucky to have such great weather the day that I went. Irish weather is very random. I always hear from the locals that you get four seasons in a day because it changes so quickly. One of my coworkers pointed something out to me about Irish people “You will always find us talking about the weather”, which I have found to be very true and funny. At the end of my trip I got some gelato and ran into my roommate and my delta sigma pi brother in Howth. It was a crazy and fortunate coincidence and a nice way to end such a wonderful, adventure filled day.

A weird thing also happened this week. When I first moved into our room I expected to be living with just college kids and most of them from Pitt, and at first that was true. There were three of us who moved in the first week all from Pitt. It is a four-person suite so we just assumed that one room would be empty for the entirety of our stay. However, this week a middle-aged man from Poland moved in who claimed he is doing consulting around Dublin for the next three months. Looks like my roommates and I are going to have to make a new friend. But hey, that’s called being flexible.

Another strange thing that happened was when I woke up the other day I got up and walked to the bathroom. I felt like there were strings attached to my feet and my first thought was a spider may have crawled in my bed while I was sleeping. I told myself not to worry about it and I went to the bathroom and went back to bed. Then I heard something fall off the wall and onto my bed. I was very tired and told myself to just ignore it and go back to sleep, but I knew what it was and I couldn’t ignore it. So I stood up, removed the blankets and found a big spider at the foot of my bed. Very scary, but its all okay now, the spider is dead and in my trash can. Sorry spider activists.