I am officially more than halfway through my summer in Dublin, a fact I can not wrap my head around. This past weekend, I was visiting my grandparents in the United Kingdom, and my grandfather pointed out that, at one point, I mentioned “going home” but was referencing going back to Dublin.

Last week felt like the epitome of Ireland weather. The week started off in the mid-seventies and sunny, and we all sat out on the grass and soaked it in. Then, Thursday, I stood waiting for the bus after week for twenty minutes in sideways rain, insane wind, and so cold that I had to pretend to shop around the grocery store at the bus stop corner while I waited.

Like I mentioned earlier, my roommate and I went to visit my grandparents who have recently moved back to England to a town called Cheltenham. Due to the current Aer Lingus strikes, our flights were changed very last minute so that we would have been there from 8pm Saturday to 8am Sunday, which would have been an incredibly underwhelming trip. So, I spent Tuesday night scrambling, and we ended up taking a two hour ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, a small town on the island of Anglesey on the very northwest tip of Wales, and then taking a two and a half hour train through the Welsh and English countryside, followed by a two hour drive, so that a one hour flight turned into almost seven hours of traveling. However, I quite enjoyed the journey and loved getting to experience the ferry.

Because of our complicated travel plans, we did not end up having as much time in England as we originally planned, and so we had to pick and choose what we still wanted to do. We spent Friday night walking around Cheltenham, a very cute town with a bit of history and a lot of really great pubs and restaurants. Then, Saturday morning, we drove down to see Stonehenge, which was very impressive. We spent the afternoon in Bath, one of my favorite cities that I was very excited to revisit. We did the tour of the Roman baths and then spent a lot of time walking around the very picturesque city.

Sunday, we had to leave quite early because we were going to have to take two trains to get back to Holyhead, but my grandparents ended up driving us the whole way there. Since we had all of our luggage and an extra couple of hours that we weren’t expecting, we went to a local pub to grab lunch, and it was made abundantly clear that they don’t get a lot of visitors. Everyone sitting in the pub seemed to be friends with each other and with the staff, and they all stared as the two Americans walked in. 

I have really been enjoying my internship recently. I have a lot of responsibilities, and I feel like I am very valued by my team. In my meetings, people ask me a lot for my input and offer their thoughts and suggestions on my projects. I feel like I am gaining a lot of confidence in myself in a professional setting, and I feel like I know what I am doing more now. 

I have definitely gained and improved on a lot of my soft skills. I feel like my communication in a professional setting has significantly improved in multiple forms. I have presented my work a number of times to new people, and I have been participating in a lot of meetings. I am not afraid to ask a lot of questions, especially because some of the projects I have been assigned to were started long before I arrived. I also think that I am learning to manage my time well and balance having many responsibilities at once. 

In terms of hard skills, I have done a lot of qualitative data analysis, something I had not done previously. I am also learning a lot of new tricks in Excel and in Word to make my life easier and to more clearly present study findings.

I have found that, in some situations, being from another country and having different experiences has been an advantage. My boss mentioned that he has noticed Americans often are better presenters, as it is incorporated more into our curriculums. He also discussed with my the critiquing process for my company and how it is more extreme than most places because there are many government guidelines. However, I am used to writing scientific research papers in academia where I once received eighty emails in one evening on how to best present my work on a poster and where I go through three or four rounds of revisions with each individual person. I think that having work experience in the US and now having adjusted to working in Ireland, I can fit in well in my work, but I can also contribute a lot that they are not used to.