Vienna was not on my radar when I booked my flight to Prague, but that’s the best part about being in Central Europe. You’re only a few hours from places you’ve only seen in books or online. I took the train over the weekend with some peers and spent two days walking through the city. There were many great sites like Schönbrunn Palace, the Danube River, and cafes that feel frozen in time. Vienna has a weight to it that Prague doesn’t. It felt far more imperial and formal, like every building was designed based off of the empire that once ran there. Prague feels more comfortable and welcoming by comparison, which honestly made me like it more for living. But Vienna was worth the train ride and it’s made me realize how much more I want to experience before I leave. Central Europe keeps surprising me, and I’m starting to plan where I want to go next.
Back in Prague, work has been challenging so far in a good way. A lot of my work came with incomplete information, and I didn’t fully understand or appreciate how common this is in a startup until I was sitting with it often. A majority of my team is online, so I can’t ask a quick question easily. Scheduling a check-in takes planning, and in the gap between getting stuck and getting a response, I must make a call to continue moving forward. That’s been an adjustment. In school, unclear directions usually give you days to weeks waiting for a professor or peer response. Here at my job, the timeline doesn’t really accommodate waiting. You either move or you fall behind, and falling behind affects people besides just you.
A few of my outputs the past week got pushed back, not because the content was wrong, but because the structure or framing needed work. At first it felt like I had failed to meet proper standards. Putting in the hours and finding out the approach was off is draining at first, but the gap between what I submitted and what was expected helped me learn the specifics about the standard of work. With lots of helpful feedback I have been understanding the depth needed. I’ve also started sitting with feedback before reacting to it. Early on I’d get a note and immediately start changing things. Now I figure out the actual issue first, then work to fix it. This change is a small one, but it increases my quality completely. There’s a difference between editing and actually improving something, and feedback has helped me do both better.
The remote dynamic has pushed me to write more precisely too. When you can’t have a real-time conversation, your written questions must be exact. Vague questions get vague responses or none at all. If I need something specific I have to say what I need and why, which is a skill I didn’t know I was developing until I actually needed it. Most business education is built around complete information and clear rubrics. The real style here is far messier and in more in depth. This internship is giving me a very direct look at this.
What’s also been interesting is comparing how I problem-solve here versus how I did back home. In the U.S., I was always surrounded by classmates to bounce ideas off of, professors with open office hours, and a campus library with lots of helpful resources. Here the support system looks different. You have to build it yourself, and doing so intentionally. That has pushed me to be more resourceful and more confident in my own judgment, two things I don’t think I would have developed at the same pace in a traditional office setting or classroom back at Pitt.
Navigating Prague has helped with the same mindset outside of work. Getting around a city where you don’t speak the language, reading situations without full context, and picking up social cues that don’t translate directly from American culture has helped me build a tolerance for the times information feels vague. The locals I’ve met, at Peakforce and around the city, tend to be direct and self-sufficient. There’s not a lot of hand holding. You’re expected to figure things out, and I’ve come to respect that in my own way. It matches the environment I’m working in, and I think both are making me better at handling whatever difficulty or task comes next.
