Jagiellonian University

Hello, my name is Yaquelyn Rivera, and I was lucky enough to get the chance to go to Krakow, Poland. My first day here I was very sleep deprived from being on 3 different planes. The amount of anxiety I had on Sunday was interesting. My flight to Chicago was delayed...

How is it even possible that the eight weeks are already up? It genuinely feels like just yesterday that we had arrived and were settling in the lab, and on Friday, we moved out:/ I felt like I was in elementary school all over again because I had a picture of me in...

It was a sad week with Marlen leaving the lab to go back to the States:/ Although it was bittersweet, it made me realize what little time I now had left and quite literally the next day, Daisy and I booked everything we could think of that he hadn't done in Krakow...

I made it!!!! My last week in Poland 🙁 ! It is a bitter sweet feeling, because I have grown to love this place so much. And I will miss my morning coffee runs, my PIRE/lab friends, and even hearing my neighbors dogs at 5 am. But I also miss my family and friends, I...

This week consisted of testing more participants! We are almost to our goal of 35 participants. It feels so great to almost be done and soon be able to analyze our data. I also began to score the definition recall test from the participants we have had thus far. In...

Wow. I cannot believe that this research period is coming to a close already! It feels like just yesterday that we were being trained on the lab equipment and now I feel as confident as I do back at Penn State with testing! I had two days off and decided to take an...

I’ve made it to the fourth week! It is crazy that just a few weeks ago I was feeling so overwhelmed with this new environment. But now I feel like it is a second home :). As far as testing goes, nothing much has changed! We are testing 5-6 times out of the week,...

My third week in Krakow already, time seems to fly! This week again consisted of testing more participants. I have enjoyed administrating the EEG portion of the study.  I was also able to meet a lot more people, from the lab I am currently working in, through the lab...

My second week in Krakow! This week consisted of finally testing participants. Me and my peers were a little worried about being able to recruit participants but so far we have had a good turn out. And will be busy for the next few weeks. 🙂  I also learned how to...

It is crazy to think that I have been here for nearly a month! We are getting into the heavy weeks of testing and plan to spend most of our time in the lab. While this is going on, we are also attending workshops on excel, R-data, and E-prime. While this has been...

Wow! Already in week three, how crazy is that. This week, we have been finalizing our schedules for the rest of our time here and it is definitely getting filled up quickly. With this in mind, I took advantage of having two days off of testing and took an overnight...

It has been an absolutely crazy week. We had our first lab meeting on Wednesday where we discussed the paper written by Declerck and Kock on "The Concept of Inhibition in Bilingual Control". It was interesting to see how they structured their lab meetings and to be...

This first week consisted of traveling from State College to Poland. Initially, I was very nervous about coming to Poland and Europe in general, because I have never previously been here. So I was unsure as to what to expect when it came to the culture and...

Dzien dobry from Krakow! It has been a crazy, but exciting first weekend. We arrived on Thursday and have been able to explore the city and have been trying to adjust to the time zone (still a work in progress). This past weekend was the Off-Campus film festival, and...

It really feels as though this experience flew by. As of tomorrow, I will have reached my goals of getting 40 participants and data collection will end. It has been an amazing experience, and I feel that I have learned a lot, not only about research, but also about...

I cannot believe it has already been 8 weeks! I only have one more week to get in all of the participants I can! This week, I had more luck with participants showing up and was able to get in 9, bringing me to 31 participants. My goal is still 40, but I would love to...

This week showed how rough attendance can be when recruiting sometimes. Last week, I had very good attendance and was able to get 10 participants in! This was an improvement of the week before where I was only able to get in 6 participants. This week showed to be...

After getting my first six participants last week, I am now up to 16 participants, and possibly 17 by the end of today! It is really exciting to see people wanting to participate, but as usual some do not end up attending the appointments. Honestly, I think it is to...

Starting Monday this past week, I started recruiting and running participants. I have been really surprised at how quickly people have been signing up for our study slots. We have been posting in groups of 5, with two postings so far, and both filled up within an hour...

There are a few things I have learned about the research field in these past four weeks. Firstly, there is a lot involved, including a lot of rules to follow. Sometimes, you think that you can do something but realize there can be many roadblocks that force you to...

Things are about to get started very soon. I did not have as much time to work on things this week as usual, but I am feeling nearly ready to recruit participants. Some things still need polished, and I need to run through my experiment protocol some more, but we are...

Week 2 of the PIRE experience consisted of uploading the program I made last week to Pavlovia to be used online once all of the other aspects of the experiment are complete. Unfortunately, Psychopy and Pavlovia did not want to agree with my upload, so it took more...

At this time last year, I would have been getting ready to board a plane to Poland within a few days, but COVID did not allow that to happen. While that is disappointing, I am so excited to be able to conduct this study even in an online format. Due to the IRB taking...

My time so far in Krakow, Poland has been incredible! I have gotten to know many people from the lab through the lab meetings, spontaneous lunches, and seeing them around the university. Everyone has been very nice, which was helpful since I have been so busy! Now I’d...

Finally, the time has come to talk about what I was actually doing in Krakow: my research project. The first few weeks of my stay were spent on improving my original research proposal. The main idea remained the same, but the experimental design has undergone a number...

Warning: don't read while hungry! 🙂 Below is just a small sample of some foods that I tried in Krakow. Whether it was a quick snack from a food truck or a fancy dish at an expensive restaurant, everything was very delicious! Honestly, I only have a few pictures...

The Wieliczka salt mine is so, so impressive, so I'm gonna start off by throwing some facts at you. With several levels underground, the mine reaches 327 meters (1073ft) below the surface at its deepest point. Its underground corridors and chambers span 300 kilometers...

I have been such a busy bee, between the work, the sight-seeing, and a visit from my Moscow friend, Nastya! Don't get me wrong, I like what I'm doing at work and I enjoyed spending every moment of my free time with an old friend, but it felt like I barely had time to...

So, you may have noticed that I did not write a whole lot about my research study yet. There are multiple reasons for that: The design went through quite a few changes in the first two weeks of my time in Zofia's lab, so I wasn't entirely sure what the finalized...

After his lecture in the morning, Thomas joined our lab for an informal meeting. It started with introductions, each person briefly describing their latest project. Thomas listened attentively, always following up with questions about the experimental design,...

Just some pictures from last weekend!    

Note: I use the terms bilingual and multilingual interchangeably throughout this post. I use them in a very broad sense referring to people who speak more than one language, acquired either by birth or later in life. Dr. Thomas Bak is a cognitive neuroscientist who is...

Krakow is full of events, and the past weekend was no exception. I was very lucky to attend not only one, but two parades! The first one was a student parade to kick off Juwenalia—an annual weekend-long students' holiday. The first ever Juwenalia was celebrated in...

There are so many churches here. Krakow is basically all churches, overwhelmingly Catholic. There are also synagogues in the Jewish Quarter, and a monastery up on a hill. Everyday I see nuns walking around the city. Cereal is sold in plastic packaging, no extra box...

It was my first Saturday in Krakow, and the weather was fabulous: sunny and warm with a light breeze. It was the perfect time for a walking tour. The guided tour I settled on was free, in English, and recommended to me by two locals and approximately a million reviews...

The Uniwersytet Jagielloński, or UJ for short, is the oldest university in Poland. Its history begins in the mid-14th century, when King Casimir III the Great decided that Poland needed its own university. He allocated funds to establish a higher learning institution...

My first day was quite short: I arrived in the early afternoon, took a long nap, unpacked, and decided to find something to eat. When I came out of my room, I saw that the halls of the building were dark and completely empty. To my surprise, the front door we came...

My journey started with three long flights, taking me through four different airports. Now, as a person well-versed in travel, I did not expect to be very amused by this process. How I was wrong! It all started in State College. The airport was so small and so cute!...