Today marks one week since I’ve started my internship, and my first experience with a “real” job has been a bit of a rollercoaster experience. I am working as a research intern at the UCD Spatial Dynamics Lab, which publishes studies on and coordinates some of the most forward thinking and important research projects in Ireland. The lab is in a really cool building right on UCD’s campus, just a 20 minute walk from our housing. This, and the fact that they don’t believe in the traditional nine to five work week has been really nice, as I haven’t had to navigate the Dublin public transit system half asleep. My week got off to a slow start, which was definitely a bit discouraging, but by the end of my first day I was placed on a really cool project that I am really excited to spend the next six and half weeks working on; INTERVAL. The INTERVAL project–INTEgrated stReet tree VALuation–is run by an assistant professor here at UCD, and is funded via a grant from the Science Foundation Ireland (similar to the National Science Foundation back home). They are working to create a database of all the trees within Dublin city limits, similar to the New York City Tree Map created by the NYC Parks department, in order to address the issue of environmental injustice in the city. There are a lot of trees in Dublin, but they are often concentrated in small pockets of privately owned, low density areas, inhabited by people of a higher socioeconomic status. The eventual goal if this project is to help even that disparity by bringing more, and healthier trees to higher density and lower income areas within the city. I am currently working on exploring how urban golf courses might contribute, or be an opportunity to help remedy, this issue, and I am excited to see where this takes me, as golf is a huge aspect of Irish culture.
In other news, we took a really weekend trip to Glendalough and Kilkenny Castle over the weekend, where we saw a beautifully preserved Monastic town from the sixth century, as well as a very cool tour of Kilkenny Castle. Kilkenny was really cool, as the Castle was nearly fully restored to what it would have looked like in the Victorian era, and they have these beautiful tapestries from the 17th century, that are incredibly rare, and depict vibrant Roman scenes. Also, my friend Tyler taught me how to solve a Rubik’s Cube on the long bus ride there and back, which has been fun to bring around on the bus instead of staring at my phone all the time.
Sunday was a nice day for down time, and after completing some classwork I turned in early. This was so I could wake up at 1:00 am to watch the Celtics battle the Mavericks in game 2 of the NBA finals, eventually going back to bed (with a big grin on my face) at around 3:30 am so that I wasn’t a total zombie in our 9:00 am class–no regrets. Following class Monday, we went to the Irish Natural History Museum of Archeology, which was also really cool, and then a few of us went to get some delicious Irish ice cream afterwards. After our dessert, we realized he had yet to eat dinner, so we ended up getting a tasty dinner in a nearby pub off of Grafton Street, which we were chauffeured to by an incredibly kind bartender who I’m sure was more than happy to get a group of noisy Americans out of his bar after we were unsatisfied with the menu.
