The second part of my internship was mostly hours spent in front of a computer trying to understand and implement new forecasting methods. I am now truly aware of the importance of Object Oriented Programming and Data Structures classes I have taken at Cornell. When I had to handle data that had millions of entries, the code I implemented in the first part of my internship failed due to high time complexity. The emphasis on time complexities in the computer classes at Cornell was extremely helpful in the last couple of weeks. Although computer science is a big part of the internship, statistics knowledge also plays a big role in tackling the challenges that were presented to me. Because of this, I am planning to take more stats courses in the upcoming years, and invest more time in applied mathematics.
Since my supervisor is a PhD student at the university, I had the chance to observe the life of a PhD student here in Germany. PhD students seem very comfortable here in terms of finances and freedom of speech. I quite like the secular nature of the universities from religious and other ideologies. There are no churches affiliated to the university, etc. There are no fraternities or sororities. There are no clear sports cliques as everyone is somehow involved in a sport. That is why I felt that there is less pressure to fit into social groups in the university. The government provides a thousand Euros monthly stipend to PhD students and takes care of health insurance and other expenses. Tax is minimum for students. One other thing I observed is that there is mutual trust between government or organizations and people. For example, you can take public transportation without having to scan your ticket to a device because the government trusts that you bought the ticket. When you buy a meal from the university cafeteria, you can mark that you are a student to get the meal for a cheaper price without having to show your student ID. I believe that all of these factors create an ideal environment for research at a German institution. I can see myself completing my PhD in Germany.
Besides these differences, there are also things that are done differently here in Germany. For example, people are quite strict about separating the trash. When I first came here, I was warned by some people not to throw my trash in the garbage can because it was metal or glass. The German government pays 20 cents for a glass or metal bottle, and usually homeless people collect these bottles from the streets and sell them to the government. I think this is a brilliant idea because it kills three birds with one stone: It helps homeless people to earn money, keeps the streets clean and orderly, and contributes to recycling.
Another difference is that German people put a lot of emphasis on being punctual. I experienced this when I met my supervisor outside of the office. She said she arrived at the meeting place half an hour before the meeting time but she didn’t show up until the exact meeting time because she thought it would be rude to show up early. I have observed this with other people as well, and I can say punctuality is very important for German people.
After all the hard work I have done, my supervisor rewarded me with a week off from work. I took this chance to travel, and bought a global train ticket that is valid across all European countries. This past week I have been to many cities in Switzerland, Italy, and France. In every single city I have been in, I was convinced there could not be a more beautiful one. I have been to all kinds of museums, from Einstein's house in Bern, to the furniture design museum in Brussels, to the chocolate factory in Zurich. During the trip, I had to stay in hostels and sometimes spend the night in train stations, where I met many fellow travelers from many countries. I was surprised at the ease with which the conversation flew even though we had such different backgrounds and only knew each other for a couple of hours.