7 hours from Ireland, 12 hours from the US
By: Angela Lao, CAS ’23
Angela listening to a PI research presentation at night at her childhood desk.
Nursing Research in Dublin – Ireland
After the daily TV show my dad watches at 9:30 pm in Macau time, he usually walks into my room and asks what I am doing. Subconsciously, I “shh” him in front of my laptop with the Zoom window wide open and unmuted. My colleagues and supervisor at Trinity laughed out loud after I realized that I was unmuted.
This has been my night routine, signing onto Zoom, checking in with my colleague Bre and my PI Maria, and updating my work each and every other night. And it’s already past the halfway mark for my internship, can you believe that?
For the past one month and four days, I’ve learned, experienced, and absorbed. I’ve learned how to conduct proper qualitative research, experienced what it is like to work with professors at another university (and the best one in Ireland!!), absorbed practical knowledge from my fellow students at Penn and some Irish culture. It was undoubtedly very hard to work remotely as a research intern, as you cannot communicate with your PI and colleagues face to face whenever a question arises. It’s even more difficult when you are across the globe from both the PI and my colleagues in the States. During the beginning of each meeting, I would ask how my colleague Breanna’s morning has been, how has my PI’s afternoon been, and they would ask how my day has been as it’s always my nighttime when we meet. Fortunately, the asynchronous component of this internship has allowed me to work with my timezone difference independently and report back with my work later. It requires a great deal of self-discipline but “life is a series of building, testing, changing and iterating”. It took a lot of email communication on both ends to make our collaboration run smoothly these past 35 days.
When one asks me how I’ve been spending my time this summer, I can proudly say that I’m doing GRIP remotely with Trinity, learning how to code interviews, how to write a paper that would potentially be published and make an impact on medicine, especially the children who are in critical care that are the subjects of our project “Tech Child”. They always say, if one door closes, another opens, and I believe this remote internship is that other opportunity, allowing me to contribute to research at Trinity, and say it loud and proud, as a Penn student.
The Global Research and Internship Program (GRIP) provides outstanding undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to intern or conduct research abroad for 8 to 12 weeks over the summer. Participants gain career-enhancing experience and global exposure that is essential in a global workforce.