My Internship

Dear fellow adventurers,

This week has been quite hectic. Returning from New Zealand, I found a plethora of catchup homework, new projects, and unresolved situations from home (I forgot about Telebears!) awaiting me.  To be truthful, I'm a bit overwhelmed with all I have to do. So, I have yet to really update this blog. It'll be a while.

But I am writing because I am currently bored out of my mind. As of right now, I am sitting in my office learning a new program called Observer XT, which is the latest software in collecting and analyzing experimental and observational data. Sounds like fun, yeah? (By the way, Aussie's always say "yeah" after every question). Right now, I'm watching a video of a programmer watching a video of a baby boy interacting with another baby boy, and then watching the programmer create a coding scheme that analyzes the data.  All in preparation to take this programmer's place.  Except I won't be watching these toddlers, I'll be looking at the handwritten notes from past observers off of an Excel sheet.

What I'm doing kinda looks like this:

At first, my internship required me to fix an Excel sheet that, when printed out, was 1023 pages.  Now, it's requiring me to understand and learn an entirely new program that will fix the sheet itself.  Hopefully within the next few weeks I'll become an Observation XT master.

Apologies, I know this post was not at all adventurous, enthralling, or mind-blowing, and you read through it (either because you're as bored as I am, or were expecting some sort of grand twist at the end). So in attempt to salvage this post, I will say that I only have 6-8 weeks left until my study abroad time is over. 6-8 weeks!  More than halfway done... that's crazy.  I've learned so much, met tons of fascinatingly different people, stretched myself further than I thought possible, etched in my memory pictures of the most beautiful places on Earth, ate questionable items, went on adventures I've always wanted but never thought I could...and God has blessed me through it all.  But I don't think it went by too fast or too slow. And I think that, by the end of this semester, I'll be ready to go back and experience what life at home and Cal has for me, with fresh eyes.

But, I still have 6-8 more weeks! (I don't know when I'm coming home, since they don't give us our finals schedule until May).  So let the adventures continue!