I now only have two weeks left of my summer in Dublin, and I am doing everything I can to make the most of it. I am trying to make sure I do activities around Dublin and with my friends after work instead of just going home and immediately taking a nap. I am also going to Edinburgh this weekend, which I am very excited for, as I was supposed to go on a big trip to Scotland last summer, but a lost passport stopped me the day before. 

I stayed in Ireland last weekend and got to do a lot. Last Thursday was the Fourth of July, a holiday I was not planning on celebrating this year for obvious reasons. However, I arrived at work to find out that a party had been planned for me with a bunch of little treats and American flags in the break room. I had a fun night celebrating with all of my friends here as well, and we met a lot of other Americans to celebrate with, too.

Friday night, I went to the Hozier concert with my roommate, something that we bought tickets for before we even booked our flights to Dublin. It was a really great show and at a very nice venue, though, in typical Ireland fashion, it did pour on us for half the show, but then there was a rainbow! 

Then Saturday, I woke up at 6:15am and went on a twelve hour day trip to Northern Ireland to see a few of the locations where Game of Thrones was filmed. Even as someone who has never seen a single episode of Game of Thrones, I would say that this was one of my favorite activities we did this summer. Not only were all of the sights really cool, but the tour was really really fun. We got to wear cloaks the whole time, and we definitely got a lot of stares. Then, at the end, we took a bunch of pictures at an old Abbey with swords and shields from the movie. 

I had a bit of a slower week at work last week because my boss was sick unfortunately, and so a lot of things had to be moved around. However, I did attend a few interesting meetings about how to better implement the programs my team is working on and how to reach minority groups around Ireland. I can definitely feel things beginning to wrap up, and I am getting close to finishing some of my long term projects that I have been working on this whole summer. 

I can definitely see how much I have grown professionally at my internship this summer. One area I especially think I have improved in is my leadership. I would say that before this summer, I never had an issue with taking on more responsibility, and I quite enjoy being in a leadership role. However, I think a lot of times I would shy away because I thought that there were others who were more qualified. Here, I have learned to move past this. I am most definitely the least qualified person as I am the only intern and everyone else on my team has a collection of advanced degrees and experience. Still, I now recognize that I am being assigned big projects for which I am in charge of for a number of reasons. One is definitely that other, more qualified people have a lot on their plates and appreciate that someone else is in charge of these few things. I also now see this as an opportunity to prove myself and become more qualified.

I think that after this summer, I will be more confident taking on leadership roles and heading teams and projects. I can tell even in the way that I speak about my projects in meetings that I am getting better at this. I am looking less for people to confirm that I am doing things correctly and am instead presenting as if to educate on whatever I am working on. I was tasked with creating the poster for a conference a few of my colleagues will be attending later this year. I did revisions with my boss first, and then I sent it to the person who headed the original research. He returned it with a lot of questions as to why I made certain decisions. In the past, I might have immediately just asked what he would prefer I say, but instead, I explained each decision, and he agreed with everything I said. 

I think that being more confident in my leadership abilities will make me more valuable to any future team that I work with because I can contribute more without taking time away from others.