This is my final post from the program, and I want to begin it by thanking the donor whose scholarship made this summer possible. Spending a summer working in Prague was not something I could have done on my own, and I hope this post gives you an honest picture of what that support turned into, because it gave me far more than a line on my resume.

The clearest growth was personal. I moved to a city where I knew no one and did not speak the language, and I had to work out everything from how to get to the office to where to buy groceries to how to spend a weekend on my own. The first few weeks were harder and lonelier than I admitted to anyone back home, and there were evenings early on when I questioned whether I had made the right decision coming at all. Within two weeks, though, I had a routine, a handful of places I returned to, and friends I was sorry to leave. I came home more confident that I can land somewhere unfamiliar and make it work, which is not something a classroom could have taught me. Several of the people I grew closest to came from countries I had never spent time around, and learning to build real friendships across those differences changed how I understand myself and how I work with others.

Academically, the summer turned coursework I had only ever practiced for a grade into work that a business depended on. I had taken the analytics and statistics courses at Pitt. I used Excel, Tableau, and Python before, but building a daily financial report that consolidated revenue, costs, and fees across seven markets and six sales channels into net profit by country was a different exercise entirely. Much of it was slow, repetitive cleanup rather than anything glamorous, and the data was messy and inconsistent, but the final product had to be something the team could rely on every day without checking it themselves. The work also brought my International Economics course to life, because I had studied how markets differ from one country to the next, and this summer I watched those differences show up in real numbers, in how a product sold in Germany compared to how the same product moved in Poland or the Czech Republic. The experience made me want to go further in those subjects during my senior year, and it showed me exactly where I am still not as strong as I want to be, particularly in handling large and disorganized datasets and in automating steps I was doing by hand. I would rather learn that now than in my first full-time role.

Professionally, the summer gave me direction. Before it, consulting was a field I was drawn to without much real experience behind the interest. This summer I rebuilt a financial reporting process from the ground up, and the team adopted my version over the one they had been using. That is the closest I have come to the actual work of consulting: taking an unclear, messy problem and turning it into something a team can act on with confidence. The company was small, and the roles were loosely defined, so I often had to figure out where I fit and get things done without much of a template to follow. I adapted faster than I expected, and it showed me I can do the job well whether or not everything around me is organized.

I did not expect how much I would learn simply from working alongside people from across Europe and beyond. My concentration at Pitt is global management, and I had read a great deal about working across cultures, but practicing it every day is a different thing entirely. I grew comfortable with colleagues who approached problems in ways I would not have chosen, and I stopped treating my own instincts as the obvious default. In consulting, where you are continually placed onto new teams and into companies that are not your own, that may prove the most valuable thing I take away from this summer.

I am applying to consulting roles this year, and now I can talk about my work at Provencelia and the project I built there instead of speaking in hypotheticals. More than anything, I came back more confident in myself and in the work I can do.

This summer was not always easy, and it was not always what I expected, but it gave me a clearer picture of who I am on my own, what I want my career to become, and how much I am willing to invest to get there. Most of that traces back to the donor who funded it, and I hope that one day I can give another student the same opportunity. Thank you for making it possible. It meant a great deal more to me than a single summer usually would.

Ahoj, Praha.