Hi everyone! Week 2 of my internship is finally complete! I’m finally starting to get into the routine of coming into the office and showing up for the company. All the while, I’m still navigating some minor challenges, such as problem solving with incomplete information. But, before I talk about that, here’s a quick debrief of my week!
This week, I have been trying to master the art of prioritizing my 5pm-9pm after my 9-5. I’ve started with some mini excursions right after work. Luckily, my company is a 10-15 minute walk from the S-bahn station, so I usually hop on the S9 and go wherever it takes me. One of my favorite excursions I’ve done has been exploring Holzmarkt 25 in the Friedrichshain neighborhood! It sits on 12,000 square meters and is a space for culture, events, nature, and some fantastic food and beer. I grabbed myself a delicious margarita pizza and cider and enjoyed it on the edge of The Spree. Another excursion we did was the Markthalle Neun, which is a bustling food market that has authentic cuisine from Italian, Turkish, Asian fusion, and Spaghetties (spaghetti ice cream: a Germany staple)!
To finish off the work week, my friends and I went to a funky, modern rooftop bar named Monkey Bar to enjoy some cocktails and laughs! We went around sunset, so the view were absolutely stunning and exactly what we needed after our first full week on the job. After that, we had an early night in, because the next day we were up bright and early to take a day trip to Hamburg, Germany! We hopped on the train for about 2 hours and arrived at Hamburg Hauptbahnof, which by the way is a beautiful station with high ceilings and glass windows surrounding all of the tracks. We walked to lunch at Hacker-Pschorr, which had delicious schnitzel, white asparagus soup, and wheat beer. After that, we took the U-bahn to the city center where we saw Hamburg City Hall, St. Nicholas church museum, and took a ferry to St.Pauli, which had a walkway along the water with a bunch of shops and boat rides. To end the night, we grabbed dinner and explored more of the city before heading home at the end of the night!
Reflecting on this past week, it was my first full 5-day week with Surflay! I am finally starting to enter a rhythm with my work and getting my tasks done for the company. But, I still encounter some daily challenges that I have to deal with in the moment. One of them is completing tasks and problem solving without all of the information I need for a task. Here’s a good example: One of the main tasks of my job is creating LinkedIn posts for current research and products that the company is producing. Sometimes, I’ll be given a product to post about, but I don’t have all of the information I need to talk about the product in detail. One way I combat this is asking one of my coworkers if there was any scientific literature posted about the product. 9 times out of 10, there was! So, I will read the article and see if that helps me understand the product. If I’m still struggling, I’ll plug the article into generative AI (NotebookLM is my personal favorite) and I’ll tell it to summarize the article for me and describe the product in a different way so I can understand it. With that information, I usually have enough to write post and then post it later that day or the next!
My main strategy for tackling tasks that I don’t fully understand, or have incomplete information, is asking for help from my supervisors, or using AI in a smart way to help! I don’t 100% rely on it, but it’s a good stepping stone to get me started on a project that needs a boost. The company also has a mega file with all of their material on every product they’ve produced or are producing. So, I try to problem solve mostly on my own with that folder to start. A lot of people in my office are very busy on research and earning their PhD’s, so it can be intimidating to interrupt them to ask for help. But, if I truly can’t figure it out by myself using my own resources, I’ll reach out.
I hope you enjoyed reading about my week! Tune in next week to hear about adapting in a new culture and being flexible to those changes in general and in the workplace. Tschau!