This last week in Prague was truly bittersweet. On a personal note, the farewells were amazing with all of the people I had met here, and it was a great time spending the last few nights here and reminiscing on some of the things we will miss, going to our favorite restaurants, and obviously visiting our go-to corner store one last time before checking out of the dorm. What made it even better was my parents finally arriving in Prague on Thursday night. I took them to my favorite local Czech restaurant that night, which was amazing as always. My boss made my last day Thursday as well, so I spent Friday and Saturday as my parents’ honorary tour guide and took them to all the famous sights around the city. This included Prague Castle, St. Vitus Cathedral, the Dancing House, and a couple of different lookout points that they loved.
We then went on an all-day tour to Bohemian Switzerland on Sunday, which was smaller scale, but a very similar sense of thrill that I experienced in Zakopane, Poland. The day started with an hour-long hike up to the famous arch, which is the largest in Europe and had a beautiful view that showcased the Czech Republic on one side and Germany on the other. We went from there to the Bastei Bridge, which was an awesome glimpse into history and the German culture that I had not yet experienced. Lastly, was the Tisa Rocks, which ended up getting cut short as there was a national emergency that kept us on the highway for two hours as the border patrol between Germany and the Czech Republic were checking every single vehicle looking for a wanted suspect. This was a weird experience, but it gave us a nice period to talk with the others in our tour group that were from many different parts of Europe and had a plethora of questions to ask about the United States.
In a professional sense, my last week at Lucent was everything I had hoped for in ending my experience abroad. The early work week was mainly spent going through my final presentation and fine-tuning certain aspects of it, as well as assisting with small tasks that my supervisor needed help with. He also sat down with me for a meeting that recapped everything I’ve done over the summer and helped me format it all into a finalizing document that can help with future interviews and resume building, which was super helpful. I was honestly very nervous about my presentation going into Thursday, but it ended up being very relaxed. They were genuinely interested in everything that I was presenting about and asked a couple of questions that left me wanting to research more into the different aspects of what I had done for the project.
Thursday is where I would say I learned a lot about how the Czech culture defines success and the ways an employee can be successful. When starting with Lucent, I made it clear that I was brand new to all the work that was being asked of me, and Charlie was very open with how I could go about learning as much as possible. As I mentioned in last week’s blog about communication differences, there was a lot of ambiguity throughout my internship in terms of work, and I would say that defining success operated in a very similar context. There was not a ton of feedback or “good jobs,” and was mainly just a quick notion of gratitude. I wouldn’t say that I took these interactions to heart or needed any reassurance, but it was just not what I was used to at first.
I would say that success is just defined as completing the work that is expected of you by the rest of the company. There is not a ton of “above and beyond” work expected whatsoever, and doing such does not get you extra appreciation from the rest of the team. From what I gathered as an intern, due to the hierarchal structure of how companies operate, success is more defined in a sense of understanding your role and fulfilling its duties to the best of your ability. This was the largest difference I noticed from the States, as it gave a large sense of community and a lot less of a competitive feeling. I feel that back home, although maybe not trying to, there is always a level of competition that you have with your coworkers in terms of who will be getting the promotion or maybe who will be assigned a certain project. There was none of this at Lucent, as everyone operated within their own role, and there was a ton of open collaboration between coworkers.