Hello Again!
I am coming to you live from my hotel room in Berlin on this fine Sunday Morning, wishing that the fire alarm didn’t wake me up (Insert angry face here). Reflecting on this past week seems a bit different than when I reflected upon my first week abroad. I have since started my internship at FormlyAI and have started to fall into a routine instead of getting up and not knowing where the day will take me. Don’t get me wrong, I love not knowing what I’ll do for the day, but there is something comforting about knowing exactly where I will be and at what time.
Outside of my internship, I try to not just sit in my hotel room for the evening (even though I am very tired). After our first day of working, our group met at a local restaurant called Ali Baba to catch up and talk about what each of us were doing at our internships. Next, on Wednesday, myself and two others from our group went out and watched the UEFA Conference League final between Fiorentina and Olympiacos. This game had some personal meaning to me, as my uncle is from Greece and his favorite team happens to be Olympiacos. I am happy to report that they did in fact win their first ever European trophy! (Shout out Uncle Mike).
Inside my internship, I really enjoy the setup that we have. I work in a collaborative space for startups sponsored by the Fraunhofer Institute. Most people seem to work remotely. At Formly, for example, only my supervisor and I work in person at the collaborative space, while the few others that are part of the company live in other countries. While it is quiet there, there are still opportunities to interact with others. Mostly, this comes in the form of playing ping pong. About 2 times a day, my supervisor and I will take a short break to play ping pong in order to keep from burning out from the work we are doing that day. I beat him once, but haven’t won since. (I’ll get it eventually). My supervisor also makes sure that I am eating the German cuisine, so he has shown me Leberkäse and Döner.
Managing my time tends to be pretty easy, simply due to the software we use for assigning tasks. We use a software called Linear, and you are assigned tickets that describe what your tasks are. You can then mark them as “In progress” or “Done”, so it is easy to know what I plan on doing for the day. Most of my tasks have been research-based so far, so I try to either switch tasks I’m working on halfway through the day, so that I don’t fry my brain from looking at the same thing all day. Some things I also like to do is to challenge myself by going more in depth than what is required of me. For example, I was tasked with creating a competitor analysis document, but I chose to also include a presentation that I will present to my supervisors sometime next week.
When it comes to managing my time, I like to try and keep a good balance. I won’t look at my work stuff when I get home. The only other challenge is also managing a second internship while I am abroad. I currently am doing some social media work for 247 Fighting Championships back in Pittsburgh, so I need to keep on top of work for them as well. What’s nice is that I can choose when I want to do that work and my boss is pretty flexible with when I finish it. The work I am doing for them is also pretty enjoyable and allows me to be creative, so sometimes it doesn’t feel like work. I will probably be very busy for them in the upcoming weeks, as they have a large event coming up that I will need to make some graphics and videos for, but honestly that is my favorite type of work.
Overall, I find it pretty easy to manage my time at my internship. Sometimes I tend to get sidetracked, but I always pull myself back in and get everything I need to finish completed. Over the next few weeks, I know it will be a bit harder to manage 2 internships and also experience the European Championship in the way that I want to experience it, but I have faith in myself and it will be worth it in the end.
Until next week,
Tschüss!