My time in Stockholm has been going well. The city is starting to feel like home — I know which train to take, which exit to use, and how to settle into the rhythm of a normal workday. The first few weeks felt like constant adjustment, but things have gotten easier and more familiar with each passing week.

The best part of the experience has been the people I work with at THREAD. My coworkers have been welcoming, and watching how they approach problems has taught me a lot. My work has covered a range of projects — research, customer analysis, competitor analysis, business strategy — and I have had the chance to turn large amounts of information into charts and visuals that are actually useful. It is the kind of work that feels meaningful because you can see how it connects to real decisions.

Outside of work, Stockholm itself has been a great teacher. The city is different from anything I knew growing up in the United States, and that contrast has pushed me to become more independent and observant. I have wandered through different neighborhoods, picked up on the rhythms of Swedish life, and slowly figured out how things work here. I have also had to accept that soccer is basically a religion in this country. As someone who grew up watching American football, I came in knowing very little, but I have enjoyed learning more about the sport and understanding why people care about it so deeply.

The biggest lesson from this internship, though, has not been about a city or a sport. It has been about uncertainty.

In school, assignments come with instructions. There is a prompt, a rubric, a deadline, and usually a clear sense of what success looks like. That is not how consulting works. At THREAD, I have been given goals without a defined path to reach them. I might be asked to research a group of investment firms or build a competitor analysis, but how I organize it, what I include, and what the final product looks like — that part is largely up to me.

At first, that was uncomfortable. When I was researching investment firms, I kept running into the same problem: too much information and no obvious way to sort it. Fund size, number of employees, investment focus, ownership percentage, portfolio companies, average deal size — all of it could be relevant, but including everything made the work messy and hard to read. I had to make judgment calls about what actually mattered.

Finding information was its own challenge. Companies report their numbers in different ways. One firm might list total assets under management, another only mentions its most recent fund. Some share exact figures, others give ranges, and some do not share anything publicly at all. I used to want every number to be precise. I have since learned that research does not always cooperate with that expectation. The better approach is to use the most reliable estimate available, explain where it came from, and be transparent when something is unclear.

The workplace culture here added another layer. Sweden trusts people to work independently. Nobody is checking in on you constantly or reminding you what to do next. That independence is something I have come to appreciate, but it also means the responsibility for understanding an assignment falls on you. You have to think ahead and ask the right questions before you are too far down the wrong path.

The way I have tried to handle all of this is by asking more specific questions. Instead of saying I am confused, I lay out my thinking and check whether it matches what was intended. Something like, “I am planning to compare these firms by fund size, ownership range, and number of portfolio companies — does that seem right?” gives my supervisor something to work with and helps me get better feedback faster.

I also stopped trying to make everything perfect on the first attempt. A rough draft — even a messy spreadsheet or a basic chart — gives people something to react to, and that reaction usually tells you more than any amount of guessing would.

I came to Stockholm to gain professional experience. What I did not expect was how much I would learn about navigating situations where the path is not clear. That skill, more than anything else, feels like something I will carry into every job I have after this.