Coming into Prague, I was really nervous about the unknown. I’ve always been good at navigating new situations, but this was a completely different beast. Not just a new city, not a new state, but a completely different country, culture, and way of life than anything I’d experienced before. Another thing I struggled with was thinking about my friends on other IIP programs. I went into this on my own, and those thoughts of “what if?” and “should I have gone somewhere else?” ate at me for the first couple of weeks. However, as I got used to the timezone, the metro system, and the internship, it all started to fall into place. I still wasn’t thrilled with my placement, but I decided to make the most of being in central Europe as a hub for travel.
In the six weekends I had to travel, I visited five new places, all on my own: Budapest, Krakow, Stockholm, Ericeira, and Helsinki. Being able to explore that many new places felt incredibly fulfilling. With each trip, I felt like I was gaining a new perspective on my own capabilities — what I could actually handle on my own. It felt like such a feat to go somewhere new, see the sights, eat the local food, and try the local drink, all without anyone else. It felt freeing in a way I hadn’t experienced before.
My favorite trip by far was Ericeira, Portugal. I’d always wanted to surf in Portugal, so getting to leave Prague for the weekend and cross a bucket-list trip off my list felt truly special. Solo traveling also meant I wasn’t living on anyone else’s itinerary — I could travel the way I wanted and do the things that actually mattered to me. Leaving Prague now, I feel a new, concrete sense of independence that I hadn’t felt before, and I’m genuinely grateful for that. Now, when I travel, it’s a lot easier for me to make decisions about where to go and what to do. Booking things, figuring out logistics — it’s all familiar to me now, and I don’t think it will hold me back from going places in the future the way it might have before this summer.
At my internship, I really leaned on my study skills and my ability to juggle multiple things at once. Staying organized and building structure for myself was key to being successful, and I’m happy to say I did that. My mornings were dedicated to theoretical work, and things got progressively more specific as I moved deeper into my projects throughout the day. I took full advantage of my company’s ticket system to track everything I completed, and by the end of my time there, I felt genuinely accomplished. I plan to carry those same habits into school this semester — staying organized and building that same kind of structure for myself.
That said, my internship wasn’t really what I wanted. I’m grateful for the experience and for learning new tools in a new industry, but overall, big data wasn’t what I was looking for. Doing SQL queries, writing Python scripts, and having a boss who was very pro-AI turned me off from the tech industry. I remember being put on a new project and my boss telling me to have Claude explain what the project was about. So I did — and even then, it didn’t really stick. I sent him a Slack message summarizing what I’d gotten out of the conversation with Claude, and all he said was to ask it more questions. That didn’t really help me. I tried every way I could think of to get it explained properly, but I still felt lost without leaning on the AI to get through it. That took away some of the meaning behind the work I was doing for the company. Overall, it was a good learning experience, but it made clear that next summer I want something more reliant on what my brain can do, not what Claude can do.
Going into school this year, I think I’m going to build my own knowledge base through my own Claude account, so it can hold context for specific classes when I’m studying. I’ve learned how to use AI to teach myself things that matter within my own field, and I want to use it the way a personal tutor would — helping me get to the goals I actually want to reach, not doing the thinking for me. When it comes to my career, I’m not afraid to reach out to people when I need help — whether that’s a recruiter for an internship, someone in my network for a referral, or anything else. Asking for help is normal, and it’s not something I’m scared of anymore.
