Nick Snyder: Ireland Week 2 – Interning and Sightseeing

My second week in Dublin was all that I hoped it to be and more. To start, I was finally able to go into the office at my internship on Friday with Think Biosolution since my boss and coworkers had returned from their conference. The bus ride was around 50 min but then I had to walk 13 min from the stop to the actual office building. It was a good thing though that my fellow Bucknell friend Colin is also interning at Think Biosolution, so it made navigating to the office that much easier. We arrived at 10 AM which is now my start time for the rest of the summer, and my boss introduced us to the project. We are working on an AI receptionist that can be used to pick up calls for doctor offices and other companies in order to help lower the workload of receptionists who work there. My first day was a decent amount of work, but I found it to be very fulfilling and was very excited after my first day was over.

During the week I was able to get a lot closer with Tennyson, Brad, and Max as we explored the downtown of Dublin and found some very cool spots. On Saturday we had our first weekend day trip of the summer to the Glendalough mountains and Kilkenny. Our bus was set to leave at 7:50 AM on Saturday so of course I slept through my alarms and had to be woken up by Tennyson at 7:40. We rushed over to the bus on a very rainy day and barely made it as our tour guide told us we were going to Kilkenny first to try and dodge the weather. When we arrived in Kilkenny our entire group went and saw the amazing Kilkenny Castle, which was built in the 12th century and stands to this day. As we explored the castle, our group gazed at the architectural design of it and the hundreds of amazing art pieces that lined the walls. My favorite part of the castle was definitely the courtyard garden since it was full of flowers and amazing greenery. We explored the rest of Kilkenny and saw various shops and a majestic cathedral before leaving and heading over to the Glendalough Mountains. The road to the mountains was quite beautiful and gave me a good sense of the Irish countryside. There were hold stone walls made up of just stone rocks stacked on each other that our tour guide said are generations old. It started raining as soon as we arrived to the mountains but I was still able to learn a lot about the monastic site there before we departed to head back to UCD.

On Monday we had our second class of Judging Justice where we compared the US and Irish court cases dealing with the legalization of gay marriage. In the afternoon we went to the National Museum of Ireland and saw a lot of ancient and archeological Irish artifacts and treasures. We learned about the history of the Vikings in Ireland and that the ancient Irish people were actually very advanced in their intellect and building capabilities. On Tuesday I returned to internship and began working and getting into a flow, realizing that I have a great interest in artificial intelligence that I could maybe continue after college.