As I have adjusted to life in Stockholm, I can feel my comfort with traveling, navigating thecity, and being in uncomfortable situations growing and taking hold in my brain. It is nice to see how I walk around the city like it is Pittsburgh or Philadelphia now, just as easy and normal. Obviously, there is still a language barrier, and I cannot understand everything I am seeing or reading, but I mean that it is just as comfortable as a US city because the unfamiliar aspects do not stop me, since I have a general understanding of the city and its transportation system, currency, vibe, etc. I felt a particular sense of growth on my trip to Budapest this past weekend! I found that because of my new understanding of Stockholm’s metro, I was not nearly as nervous as I used to be tackling a new transport system with Budapest’s metro. It is also funny how incredibly different it is in some ways, and how that did not stop me in the slightest. Stockholm’s metro is pretty large, modern, and technical. Budapest’s metro is tiny; it has no digital signage, the train is old and loud, and the stops barely give you any time to get in and out before moving on. And despite all of that character, I did not look at the experience any differently or run into any hurdles. The buses came as nothing new either, but that skill I mastered in Pittsburgh. All of this is to say that I am noticing considerable growth and excitement in feeling comfortable navigating these new cities, as long as there is no drastic language barrier. Maybe I’ll get over that later, but for now I will stick with the small wins. 

With my internship, I feel myself developing new comforts in other ways. My competence in communication has improved, as well as my ability to take things more head-on. I have discussed this probably too many times in other blog posts, but my general confidence in unfamiliar tasks has grown substantially, kind of like my confidence in tackling unfamiliar cities. This is in many situations I have previously mentioned: vague tasks, limited direction, etc. But as a transferable or “soft skill, I think this ability to take on assignments head-on, without nearly as much hesitation, and with newfound confidence will be incredibly helpful in future roles. However, I think this is well paired with an ability to do a bit of communication and clarification. In college, I can find myself asking almost too many questions. I think this role has helped me narrow down what is really necessary, trust my gut with the rest, and improve my overall communication skills. My supervisor is a very busy person, so while in person, he may be on a phone call or working on important tasks. And frequently these past few weeks, we have been remote, so I have to narrow down my clarifications and concerns into a couple of Slack messages. If not, I will be pestering him and blowing up his notifications all day. I have greatly improved in asking just what I need to move forward and make sure we are on the same page with the assignments at hand. 

As for technical and “hard” skills, I am primarily working on improving my preexisting skills. I am working a lot with Canva, which I have always loved. I even upgraded to a month of Canva Premium, just to make my life easier with the amount I am using it. I think my ability to find proper resources and references has improved greatly. I am working with color matching, graphic resources, better photo references, etc. I also am further improving how I overlap Adobe, AutoCAD, and Canva when creating my floor plan diagrams, which I primarily worked on during the first few weeks. I am getting better with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and organizing my computer files as well as my Google Drive files. This is all software I was aware of and using often, but every new role and assignment is super helpful to further my abilities with all of it, and how to use everything in tandem for unique purposes.

Looking forward to this weekend in Helsinki, and then next weekend, which is somehow my last weekend in Stockholm!