My internship at Peakforce and time in Prague ended a few days ago. To end my time in Europe strong, my mom and I took a short trip to Budapest as a way to close out the summer. The last week at work was mostly putting final touches on finished projects. I completed my final project, handed it off, and said goodbye to my coworkers and newfound friends I had spent the summer with. I packed up my bags, sad that my time there was over, but happy to have been able to experience it. A few days of walking around Budapest exploring both sides of the river was the perfect opportunity to see a few more sites, and reflect on my time abroad before heading home.
This internship pushed me in different ways any classroom has before. I came in with the business skills and mindset I picked up at Pitt, and I found out quickly that these tools only help get you to the starting line. The real work I endured was figuring out how to apply these somewhere unfamiliar. This was especially hard at first being that the market ran on rules I did not grow up with and the people communicated in ways I had to learn to understand. I spent the summer researching a foreign market, building things I had never built before, and defending my thinking to people who knew far more than I did. Overall it went very well, although of course some of it did not go how I envisioned. Learning to be okay with that and treating bad outcomes as a source to learn rather than a pure failure was one of the more valuable ideas I learned.
Living alone in Prague did as much for me as the job did. Having my own place in Vinohrady meant a lot more free time but also a lot more responsibility. I learned the tram lines, found my grocery store, built a routine, and worked around it when needed. It feels small written down, but doing it in a city where I could not speak the language changed how I saw myself. I came in nervous about being on my own in an unfamiliar place, but I am leaving comfortably with how I was able to perform. This comfort with the unknown was the biggest change I noticed, and it carried into every weekend trip I took, where for the most part I showed up and figured everything out as I went.
The professional growth was just as real. I got better at leading myself. Being an intern in a foreign office, no one walked me through every step, so I learned to take a vague assignment, decide what mattered, and move forward to my best ability without waiting for permission. I got more direct in how I communicated to my coworkers because assuming people understood my context led to confusion. I learned to ask better questions and to say when I did not understand something instead of nodding along. These leadership habits were not as prevalent to me before and did not have the same importance at home versus abroad.
Understanding the people here took a long time and came mostly from paying attention to short daily conversations. Life in Prague moved at a different pace than what I grew up with in the suburbs of Philadelphia. People are more reserved at first, and warmth shows up later. I stopped reading the standoff culture as coldness and started matching it to make my days easier and my work relationships stronger. That kind of adjustment is not something you can easily plan for. You pick it up by living somewhere long enough to stop expecting it to work like home, and understanding the changes needed to implement.
What I want to bring back to Pitt and into my career is less about any one skill and more about how I carry myself now. I know I can drop into a situation I do not fully understand and function. I know how to lead myself through unclear work. I know that being uncomfortable is usually a sign I am learning something, not a sign that I should back off. Those are the things I was missing before I left, and they are worth more to me than anything I could have picked up sitting in a classroom at home. When I start looking for a my next opportunity, that confidence is what I plan to lean on. Prague gave me the space and environment to test myself away from everything familiar and I am grateful for the opportunity.
