Hello everyone! I am so excited to have begun my PIRE journey!

The past few days have been a learning curve in my house. My dad is working from home, my siblings are still taking online classes, and I have started my PIRE internship here in Connecticut instead of in the Netherlands at Radboud University. Needless to say, the strain on our WiFi has been significant. I have scored myself a nice area in our house to set up my laptop and settle in to start my work.

Something that my supervisors and I have noticed immediately is that we dearly miss seeing each other in person and being able to pull up a chair and look at the same computer screen. It has been so different having to transition all of our work to function properly under these remote conditions, but we have already made great progress! Each day brings new challenges and tasks for me to complete, and there is nothing more satisfying to me than seeing a color-coded and completed to-do list! We are set to begin online recruitment very soon, so stay tuned for updates on how we’re running participants online. In the meantime, I have been doing lots of reading, writing, and thinking about our research- where it began and how it will positively impact the research community and the world. It empowers me to do my best and reminds me that although we are separated by distance, we are all working towards the same goals.

I hope everyone has had a good first week!