Two months seems like an eternity in any other case. But the two months I’ve spent in Paris are perhaps the fastest two months in my entire life. I’ve experienced and learned an enormous amount of things in a small period of time.
I still remember my very first day when I landed at the infamous Charles de Gaulle airport, spent a couple of hours waiting to retrieve my bags, go through security, and find a taxi to get to my homestay apartment. I had never visited France nor Europe before. So the moment I got into the taxi and we moved closer to Paris from the suburbs, I paid attention to every detail I saw outside the window. From the road signs in French to the trucks and buildings around me, I was immersed.
My host family has been extraordinarily kind, generous, and welcoming; this was a wonderful support system to have with the stress of adjusting to working and living in a new country. The same goes for my supervisors and colleagues. The very first day, I was introduced to every single person on the seventh floor of my research building. A campus of several buildings in a research and hospital ecosystem, surrounded by trees and bushes.
Everyday was a routine. I would take the bus to Passy station and then metro line 6 all the way to my workplace. Swiping my badge to enter the research building and labs. A lot of unpredictable factors came into my internship. The first half, I felt like I was being pushed to my limits to grow my computational side. I was writing and running scripts almost everyday as I constructed and finetuned my pipeline. Right when I thought I mastered it during the second half, approaches changed and I found myself thinking more about biology, genomics, and statistics.
I have had many days where I was quite happy discussing my results with my supervisor, feeling like I was accustomed to the rhythm. But there was also stressful days where the American in me would be stuck solving a problem and stubbornly spend several hours on the task. Some habits are not completely gone, but I feel the improvement.
No matter how stressful the day was, it was comforting to know that everyday, once on my way to work and once back, I would be able to indulge in the same view of beautiful Haussmanian architecture, the Eiffel Tower, and the Seine. In the middle of the program, I was somehow used to it and did not think much. But towards the end, when I was reminded it was temporary, I treasured it more. Not just the views, but everything that was a part of my routine in the country. Walking to the Carrefour and Franprix grocery stores to get fresh vegetables, pasta, and comté for my meals, organizing my graphs and folders on my work laptop in the lab while I waited for scripts to run, conversations with my colleagues over lunch where we played crosswords in French, and much more.
Overall, it was an incredibly valuable interdisciplinary internship experience and probably the most difficult work I have ever done, largely because of the time constraints, the technical nature of the work, the fact that all of my colleagues were much more experienced than me, and the different language. There was a sense of competition ignited in me with each day, but a positive one. Going to research meetings and watching people present their work every week, listening to my colleagues talk about their future goals, and the conversations people had about science around me really inspired me.
I’ve noticed the difference in my working and communication style at the start and end; I have become a lot more organized, analytical, independent, and culturally fluent in a way. There’s invaluable aspects of culture I’ve discovered that I’d like to keep, like the attitude of working efficiently rather than worshipping the grind and spending long hours. Or giving feedback more directly in certain situations. Most importantly, I think I have become more open-minded and willing to push my comfort zone, whether inside the workplace or elsewhere.
The day of my flight back, I almost cried. My host parents gave me a very warm farewell and we exchanged kind words, promising to keep in touch. I made it just in time to catch the last Noctilien bus to the RER station, which would then take me to the airport. My suitcases were quite heavy and there were several flights of stairs, but many kind strangers saw me with my luggage and immediately took the initiative to carry them down for me. Even at the airport, when I was trying to find the terminal and almost tripped with my heavy luggage, two lovely girls immediately came to help me and walked with me to the terminal.
The fact that people were so kind to me on my last day really reinforced in me that I was going to really miss this city even more. I may not be able to be in Paris for a while, but I am going to bring Paris to Pittsburgh, for sure. I’ve already made chocolate mousse at home and it tastes exactly like my favorite chocolate mousse I have had in Paris. While in Pittsburgh, I did go out to try restaurants, go shopping, or on walks with friends every now and then. But I really stick to the same neighborhoods and food and never put in a huge amount of effort trying to look for things to do.
After being in Paris, I’ve noticed that a lot of aspects of the city and life that seem intriguing to me are pretty mundane to Parisians or people have lived here for a long time. I remember how excited I was the first time I went to a grocery store. Which makes me realize, people can spend several months or years in a place and still have so many new things to see and do. So during my last year of university at Pittsburgh, I want to try to look at the city from a tourist point-of-view in some ways; I am ready to push my limits and explore as much as I can. There are pleasant surprises everywhere. To my colleagues, my host family, and the friends I made over the course of this program, je vous remercie !
Lastly, I would like to thank the donors who have made this experience possible for me. The Josephine and John McCloskey Memorial Award, Global Experiences Office Scholarship, Martinson Elevate Award, Harris N. Miller and Deborah A. Kahn Study Abroad in Europe Award, and Experiential Learning Schratz Grant have been generous contributions allowing me to support my stay in France. I am grateful to the people who read my applications and trusted that I would make the most out of these awards and do something valuable with it; it would have never been possible without them. Like the title of this last post says, this internship has changed me forever for the better. I am dedicated to use the skills and knowledge acquired to help myself and the people around me grow!