6/1/2025 | Sunday
I didn’t mention this last week because I pretended it was not a thing, but on Friday, I ended the day feeling slightly ill. I stayed in that night, but the next morning we went to Howth. This was not a great deal for my sickness, and I woke up Sunday feeling pretty bad, so I decided to commit my day to doing nothing, and that is exactly what I did. I am—in a weird way—happy I got sick. Coming to a new country is so exciting, but it is also overwhelming; literally everything is new. Even the things that should not be new, like getting dressed and ready in the morning, are different because everything is in a different place than when you’re home. It takes a lot to mentally and physically keep up with. I am glad that getting sick forced me to slow down. I’m not sure I would have, but I think Sunday and (as you will see) Monday were necessary for me to take a minute for myself. I watched TV, made pasta and chicken for Neila and me, then planned some weekend trips with my roommates.
6/2/2025 | Monday
Ireland has a beautiful five days in their year called Bank Holidays where no one works, and this Monday happened to be one of them. This is especially good considering when I woke up, I felt even worse than I did Sunday! We were supposed to have a picnic in Saint Stephen’s Green, but I honestly did not want to move, so I decided to hang back. Neila also was not feeling up to the green, so we spent, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the entire day just hanging out and watching TV. It was nice and I think we needed it, as we were both feeling nervous about our placements starting the next day. A big part of moving abroad has been trying to become ok with uncertainty. Everything you do abroad is uncertain and often a lot more complicated than you originally thought it was going to be. While this is frustrating, I’ve been looking back on my time here, and I have already begun to forget about the little frustrating moments. They feel massive at the time, but the more important memories and lessons are from the moments where you’re happy, exploring, and learning how to exist in a brand new place.
6/3/2025 | Tuesday
Currently, my supervisor is deep in conference season, and because I got the placement fairly late, I have not been able to attend them. There is one next Wednesday in Galway which she is trying to get me on, but because she was away, I was doing remote work. This week was based around doing a field visit to some ecological sites on Wednesday, so this day was all about preparing for the visit. As such, I was coordinating with my coworker on logistics and materials, as well as establishing the goals of the outing. I also wrote up a water quality report using the governmental sites, which I have had to relearn how to use since they’re the Irish government sites, obviously. Working from home is kind of fun here, because I get to watch the magpies break into people’s homes. They fly right up and under the window, and just go right in. We got robbed the first night here by them, so we are extra careful about the windows now, but they’re pretty persistent. I watched one of them open the window more with their head. Crazy birds!
6/4/2025 | Wednesday
Wednesday was THE DAY. My morning started a little hectic, as I accidentally hopped on the wrong train, but luckily I noticed before things were too irrecoverable. I ended up taking five trains that morning, which was, in a sense, impressive. I met my coworker at the train station, and we drove to the site. The first thing we checked out was the intertidal zone, where a honeycomb worm colony was supposed to be. He said they likely got washed away because we could not find them. Then we went to two streams to check out water quality using macroinvertebrate sampling and algae observations. We also took samples to be processed in the lab. After we finished at the streams, we grabbed coffee and headed to a coastal pond. We grabbed a sample of an oxygenator aquatic plant that is apparently pretty rare, and I hope to take it to Galway if I can go. This day was so self-actualizing; I was in a brand new country, with a new coworker, at a new site, but I still knew so much more than I thought I did. Going into the day, I was nervous because I thought I wouldn’t know anything. I thought I would roll up to the site, be completely clueless, and possibly make a bad impression about being incapable of doing the work. While I didn’t know everything, and my coworker taught me so much, I found myself able to apply concepts and ideas as second nature. At one point, my coworker said something about not wanting to keep me too long because it had been a long day, but honestly, I hadn’t noticed. I was so wrapped up in the work, and how much I enjoyed being out in nature and wading around the stream, that I would’ve stayed out for hours more. The only thing that affects me out in the field is the heat, and it was a cool, windy Irish afternoon. Then my coworker dropped me back at the train station, and I headed back to town. The commute ended up being long because someone crashed their car into one of the train bridge pillars, so they had to stop all trains going over that bridge until it could be inspected. I decided to make my way into the city and find a bus stop I could use. I did this without my phone as well, because I have yet to purchase a SIM card. After I got home, I went straight back out, essentially, and my roommates and I got a small dinner and then sat at the Molly Malone statue. It was honestly an emotional rollercoaster of a night.
6/5/2025 | Thursday
Another work-from-home day, but this time I was writing up my field report. Not much to report on the work front, as it was pretty much synthesizing information and drawing possible conclusions from our visit. On the home front, it was also pretty quiet. My roommate had quite the day at work, and also happened to get really sick, so I stayed home with her to get her tea and meds and generally make sure she was alright.
6/6/2025 | Friday
Today’s work was pretty light, as I bussed into Trinity to handle the samples. The hardest part of my job is honestly coordination. Everyone is very busy and wear a million different hats, so getting their attention for simple and small tasks has been a little bit difficult. That being said, through all the commotion, I got to explore Trinity a bit as well, which was nice. The campus was really beautiful, and it seemed to be a great place to go to school. There are a lot of tourists, but I feel that’s true around Pitt as well, in a funny way. Not tourists in the traditional way as much, but so many campus tours. I had to get stamps as well, so I headed to the post office to grab those, and then to a very cute bookshop. I don’t usually get books, but I wanted to read the new Sally Rooney novel, and I figured it might be nice to have it as a memento, as the book is set in Dublin. My roommates and I have found a very cute pub and beer garden near our apartment, so we headed there for some food and drinks, and conversation. It was a great way to end our first work week!
6/7/2025 | Saturday
We had a slow start to the day, but one of my roommates and I eventually got up and made it to Aldi. I love Aldi. It is so cheap, the produce is always great, and you can get pretty much all the fridge and pantry staples. It was $30 per person for groceries for the week and then some. That is so amazing. Part of living abroad that’s been a bit challenging for me has been managing my meals. I always seem to make too much or too little, as I am used to being able to throw something into the fridge or freezer. Here, I have to be more careful, because the fridge and freezer are pretty small and shared amongst 4 people. We bussed back home, got the groceries sorted, and then we all headed into town to check out the shopping. I didn’t get anything besides some postcards and a photostrip from the photobooth, which was very nice. We had dinner at an Italian place; the affogato was so amazing. I don’t know why I don’t get these more. I love coffee ice cream, it’s exactly that, but stronger and better. We then headed back to the house to make our sandwiches and get some sleep, as we had a very early morning planned…
Internship time management
So far, my time management and task prioritization have been pretty smooth. As I mentioned before, my supervisor is busy right now with conferences and travel, so most of my projects are self-driven or self-explanatory. For example, on Tuesday, I was given the directive to do background research on the stream we were going to visit on Wednesday. So I started off by getting to know governmental sites, then I wrote up my report. Most of my tasks are pretty much all-day activities, so prioritization just has to do with what part of the writing I should do first. I have written a lot of reports and research papers, which allows me to know the order I prefer to write in. I imagine in the coming weeks, I might need to practice more prioritization as I get more smaller tasks in the office. I plan to start off with the smaller, easier tasks, then move up to the longer ones. This will allow me to get some good energizing check box type work done in the morning, then go on to some deeper thinking.
