2024

I cannot believe this week was the last and final week of PIRE. I cannot believe that in a few short hours I will be on a plane headed back to State College. I am eternally grateful for the experience to not only continue with my passion of research, but continue it...

Final week in nijmegen , feeling both happy and sad about it but overall very grateful. We had our last few participants this week , and even though we didn't meet the amount of participants we wanted, we still got more than what we expected with the year ending. We...

Where has the time gone? I cannot believe that week 7 in Nijmegen has already come to a close! We kicked off this week with a meeting with our advisor, who assembled a plan for our final week here at Radboud. We then attended a lab presentation by one of the...

I simply cannot believe that we are at the beginning of our very last week in Nijmegen. I cannot even begin to fathom how this went by so fast. This week we continued to work on changing the audio files, specifically the accappella files to make them sound more...

I can’t believe it’s already been 6 weeks in this beautiful city! This week was quite wonderful, particularly because my mom came to visit! I got to show her some of my favorite spots in the Netherlands, and we took a weekend trip to Amsterdam. Additionally, my...

Week 5 was such a wonderful week! My apologies if this submission is going up at the same time as my Week 6 submission, for some reason my blog post for week 5 didn’t upload successfully. This week was such a wonderful week for both our personal study, as well as the...

I cannot believe we're almost to the finals days of our PIRE experience, feeling very very bittersweet ! This last week I felt a little bit homesick , since everyone parents came to visit so every one of the girls spent a lot of time with their family members. On...

I cannot believe we've been here for a whole month but it's so sad to think about the fact that were just a few weeks into leaving. Like I said in my previous blog, participants are starting to show less often due to the fact that finals are going on and it's the end...

This week was slow with participants because students are starting their final exams 🙁  But we have used this week to recharge energies since homesickness is getting to us. On Thursday we did not have any participants so we decided to take the day for ourselves. As...

We presented our presentation this Monday in front of a team of researchers at Roadbed. We included much research on past studies that were similar to what we wanted to prove, and then discussed procedures, methods, and our research questions. All the feedback we...

This week was preparing for a lot for our presentation. Not only did we have lots of preparations for our presentation on Monday about our project, but we also had to further work make different audio files using a different software. For the audio files, we needed...

This week started off strong with a lot of participants back to back! It has been a great experience to test participants and meet so many lovely people.  This week we had our presentation at the Multilingualism meeting. All of the professors are so intelligent and...

I cannot believe I am already halfway through this amazing PIRE experience already! This week, I received excellent instruction regarding Praat scripts. This was something I was skeptical of attempting, for it is a bit of a confusing process that I'd never seen...

The weekend was amazing! Me and the girls went to Amsterdam (finally!!) and we had some amazing food, amazing time exploring the city and even did touristy stuff. But obviously it was short time lived, because on Monday at lunch me and Ceci gave a presentation about...

I can hardly believe that I have already been in the Netherlands for one month. I feel as though this experience is flying by! This week we started working with a number of audio files. Altering aspects of them to fit better within our study like the start playing of...

I simply cannot believe how fast the time is flying here in beautiful Nijmegen! We have made excellent strides in our LRM closed-set study. In addition to this, we are currently assisting Dr. Brouwer with her new study regarding the manipulation of music factors to...

This week has been a very productive week for our research. We are finally in the last couple steps of preparing our initial study to be piloted. This is exciting because we will be working with both Dutch bilinguals as well as English monolinguals. Our next step is...

Happy to say that me and Ceci have done 8 participants this one week, it's been hectic but exciting. We've been testing at Radboud starting from 10:30am and our last participants ending at 5:30pm - so yes, we've been exhausted these past few days. We're spending a lot...

We finally started testing participants! We were fully booked this week with participants back to back. It has been so fun and a week full of activity. We also explored new buildings on campus, and in between participants we took a walk on this big green area on...

After a long weekend because of the Pentecost here in Amsterdam and university was closed me, Ceci and Madison decided to jut walk around the town and explore new restaurants around the area. W e were supposed to have a meeting with our advisor Sussane but she...

This week was kind of slow regarding our project because we were still fixing paperwork and we were attending meetings for lab protocol to start the testing. Also, we explored campus and made friends with some locals. The campus is so beautiful and full of plants and...

This week I was able to continue working on the finishing steps on Labvanced to begin starting piloting our data soon. I have always claimed to never be good with technology, but it has been fulfilling learning how to use this software to produce my ideal study....

This week, my research partner and I made excellent strides in the development of our research project! Getting acclimated to a new location is always slightly difficult for me, for change poses many unique obstacles. Though this is true, my love for Nijmegen (as well...

The overnight trip from Philadelphia to Amsterdam was long but smooth. We arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam and got on the first train to Nijmegen. I am so impressed with Nijmegen. It is a beautiful old city with a young atmosphere. Nijmegen Centrum is a...

We started the week attending the lab, visiting campus, and meeting Susanne Brouwer, our research advisor. She is very welcoming and she made our first day on campus a wonderful experience. We went over everything we were going to do and we met Dali Chirino, Susanne’s...

My first week In Nijmegen, Netherlands was fantastic. The trip from State College, PA all the way to Amsterdam, Netherlands ran very smoothly no trouble at any time. During the journey me and my partner Ceci were talking on how nervous but at the same time excited we...

Second week here and we started going into the office already ! We met with the our head researcher Susanne and with her assistant Dali that will help me and Ceci set some things up since he knows the protocol better than us. We were given an office which is amazing ,...

My first week in Nijmegen has been nothing short of exceptional. I have gotten the amazing opportunity to meet new people, experience a culture outside of my comfort zone, and focus on my research and bettering myself as a researcher and world traveler. I have never...

The first week of travel is always filled with copious emotions. The combination of excitement, nerves, and adventurous spirit cultivates a unique feeling as you immerse yourself in any new culture. I've been graced with many fantastic opportunities in my lifetime,...