Awaiting a Break

This was quite a short week before the big holiday week. I went through my usual routine of working on weekly lab reports with my team members. There were some noteworthy events that occurred however.

Fall/Winter Drexel co-op job search opened up recently and I applied to five jobs leaning toward my interest in pharmaceuticals. I also made the decision to contact former coworkers to help me in my job search. I learned that it is important to network with my past connections because job searches cannot only be individually completed. I definitely made sure to include my Bochum Study Abroad experience in the resume which could hopefully be used as interview talking points. They could also be used to connect the skills I have gained from this program to the job position responsibilities.

Additionally, I notice that I keep forgetting to mention my two roommates with whom I have spent a large amount of time together. We had an interesting discussion over whether my blogs and I were too formal. One noted that I rarely mention names on my blogs so sometimes my sentences sound vague and impersonal but I responded with being concerned about protecting people’s privacy. However, I did take their concerns seriously and will be more specific about the individuals I am sharing experiences with without mentioning individual names and focus on emphasizing the “personal” aspect of my blog posts. I may avoid this personal writing because I am so used to technical writing that discusses a process straightforwardly in the third person. Additionally, I did recognize that I could be too serious at times so it is important for me to relax once in a while and enjoy nonacademic activities which was why I wanted to travel during the break. On another note, they are each planning to have their own individual activities during the break. My Irish roommate is planning on traveling a little bit and my Italian roommate hopes to travel to Hamburg and other European cities. However, he is not worrying too much about possible plans since he mentioned that while living in Europe he already had the opportunity to see many cultural attractions and cities.

Furthermore, I planned some trips for the holiday break at the last minute. Several Bochum study abroad participants were planning on traveling to four European cities: Prague, Budapest, Vienna, and Munich so I was interested in joining them. I decided to purchase hostels through hostelworld.com and transportation for these trips using Google Flights and DB Navigator at the last minute with another study abroad participant. These websites helped us keep our travel costs below 600 Euros for a week which is definitely what prospective Bochum study abroad participants should consider when trying to plan a week long trip. Finding the cheapest options available would also help us enjoy our trips and prevent us from exceeding our predetermined budgets. However, it was a bit rude of me to schedule these trips when my lab group was working on the lab report so in retrospect I should have scheduled these trips earlier.

Besides that note, two other members of our travel group created a Google sheet that detailed our trip schedule, accommodations, planned activities, and payment tab for when payments were done together. This is extremely useful for organizing a trip and keeping track of people’s debts to each other during a trip. I recommend that anyone going on such a week long trip of European countries create an organized sheet like that so that they always have an idea of what events are happening and what the next steps are. Certainly, I’m excited to see where this trip goes as shown by me with other Drexel students relaxing near Mensa (Figure 1), the Ruhr dining hall.