Introduction

What a difference a year can make. I know I've spent a lot of time with the outreach department, but I swear this is from the heart - engineering opens doors.

I had no idea one year ago what I was in for, coming to Ireland to try my hand at research. I believed it would be far too theoretical for my interest and although I was going to do my best and give it a chance, my expectations weren't high. Imagine my surprise when I found out I loved it! You can't get much luckier than getting paid to read, experiment, and learn. Here I thought I'd just be trying something new as an excuse to travel, but Science Foundation Ireland got the better of me! A bit wily, but I'm glad.

Beyond the academics, though, I really enjoyed learning how international research is. Whether through conferences, visiting researchers, fellowships or graduate studies, there is an extraordinary amount of global movement involved. For those who followed my blog last year, I'm happy to say that I have stayed in touch with L and K! And I'm planning to have visited both by the end of this summer. :)

So to set the stage for this year, this summer I invite you to follow at your own interest (of which there's hopefully some, as you're now several paragraphs in and I do love writing) and learn alongside me as I work in Germany for 12 weeks. Through the German government's RISE program, I will be completing a research internship at the Universität Paderborn, growing silicon carbide microcrystals and characterizing them (fancy engineering speak for measuring their properties). I'd love to tell you more about the project, but you'll have to find out as I do!

Additionally, this summer's experience is going to be a 'level up', so to speak, because I don't know any German (I am working in English, but living here for 3 months). I mean, I really don't speak it. And when I try to read it, I imagine it in my head pronounced in English, try to say it a different way out loud, and then find out it is actually said in a third way that is different than the other two I imagined, and physically impossible (or so it seems) for me to pronounce.

If you follow along, I promise to share the beautiful, the amusing, the awkward, the inspiring, the informative, and the cultural with as careful an eye as possible...and then throw some photos in every now and then to shake things up. All in all it's going to be a good adventure - here's to the summer!