This week started out with quite a kick.
For my internship, I was invited to come in person on Monday and attend a research presentation and training by Hungarian psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Stephens-Sarlós, on primitive reflexes. Dr. Stephens-Sarlós’ work is incredibly novel, not to mention fascinating, and I spent the entire day just completely in awe of and grateful for the experience of hearing from her. In brief, her research explores what happens when primitive reflexes return later in life, the symptoms that arise, and what can be done to heal these reflexes and, in turn, treat their symptoms.
Primitive reflexes are the natural reflexes that all babies are born with, such as the sucking reflex or the grabbing reflex, however, most of these reflexes are meant to disappear within the first year of life, with all of them being gone by the time an infant turns three. When primitive reflexes return in older children and adults, it can be a strong signal of neurological and/or psychological problems. Dr. Stephens-Sarlós’ research has discovered fast-acting intervention exercises that correspond with each primitive reflex to rid of them and ease their resulting cognitive symptoms. I had never heard of this kind of intervention being done before Monday and so I learned so much just from sitting in and listening.
After work on Monday, I settled in for the night and prepared for the Jimmy Awards. For those who are not familiar, the Jimmy Awards are a national high school musical theater competition in the United States, and they are extremely competitive. From the entire country, only 110 high schoolers qualify to even compete, 34 will make it as semifinalists, 8 will be awarded spots as finalists, and 2 will win. Even just making it to the Jimmys is a huge deal to these high school students, as most Broadway casts today are made up of Jimmy nominees. Not to mention, people all over the country tune in to the Jimmys every year, making it a huge platform to be able to present yourself on.
My brother was competing in the Jimmys this year, and so my roommates, one of my friends back at home, and I anxiously watched live. This did entail us having to stay up most of the night since Dublin is 5 hours ahead of New York City…but it was worth it. He made it to the semifinalist round, making him a top 34 high school actor in the country, and a top 17 high school male lead, although he didn’t make it as a finalist (rigged 🙄). I would love to say that we had so much fun watching, but I don’t know if fun is necessarily the right adjective to describe the deep emotional distress I was in. This is my Oscars. Watching your brother compete on a Broadway stage, in a nationally broadcast competition, is no joke; it was extremely stressful. Fun fact of the night, though, Josh Groban went up to him, and only him, to personally introduce himself and tell him how “in awe” he was of him. A win is a win.
Wednesday was also quite an exciting day as my roommates and I had tickets to go and see The Cave at the Abbey Theatre. We decided during our first week of being here that we wanted to carve out the time to see a play, so we’ve been sitting on these tickets for quite a while now. We went into the play completely blind, with our only context of it being that the reviews seemed good and that Tommy Tiernan is notoriously hilarious. By intermission, we were stunned. This is easily the best play I’ve been to—the acting was phenomenal, the script writing was truly inspiring, and the story itself was tremendously emotional. You definitely do not need to be a fan of plays or a fan of Tommy Tiernan to enjoy The Cave, I would highly recommend the show to anyone. The most shocking moment of the night for me was seeing one of my old high school teachers at the theater. What are the odds?? I was aghast.
Then, Thursday night brought another exciting, and I suppose a bit of a spontaneous, outing. Kendall and I decided to get tickets to go see Neil Young in concert at Malahide Castle! The venue was gorgeous, the weather was not. It unfortunately rained on us for the entirety of the show, but it was so worth it. We got to hear both Neil Young and Van Morrison live, like helloooo, we had a great time. Once the show ended, we sprinted out of there. I mean serious hustle. We were joking about how navigating the maze out of the venue reminded us of playing soccer again, and so of course we turned it into a game, yelling directions at each other like “switch field!”, “up the line, take it all the way to the corner!”, “through, through, find your lane!”. I swear it inadvertently became the most exhilarating, beautiful, girlhood experience of our entire trip. And you know what, it worked. We somehow made it from the back to the front of the pack and were on the first train out of the station. Ugh, I just love being here with Kendall.
In terms of my internship, the rest of the week went well. I’ve been tasked to write a brainstorm piece about our research with the intent of it being submitted to RTÉ for publication, so I’ve spent much of the week completing a lot of the pre-work for that. On Friday, I checked out the UCD library for the first time. I loved doing work there. It is huge with so many great seating options, I will definitely be going back. I truly feel as though I am gaining so many important soft and hard skills from my internship, and just generally, my time abroad. I have been put in numerous situations that have allowed me to practice my adaptability, communication, and emotional intelligence skills. For example, at my internship, emotional intelligence has become a vital skill since I am dealing with subject matter that involves working with the families of pediatric cancer patients. In terms of hard skills, my internship has taught me so much about qualitative analysis and scientific writing. I can’t wait to go back to school in the fall and take into my courses everything that I’ve learned here.
After work on Friday, my roommates and I went to a few different bars around Dublin and found some really fun spots with great live music. One of my favorite parts about Dublin has been how easy it is to find live music any day of the week.
Saturday, we had a chill day. I slept in, went grocery shopping, and Kendall and I dyed my hair, which was fun. Then, on Sunday, Kendall and I went to the National Gallery and to the National Museum of Ireland, which are outings we’ve been meaning to do since both museums are free!
Slán go fóill!