As my two-month lease ended on the 7th, I had to move out of my temporary home that day as well. Luckily, the post-doc in our lab was out the entire week for a conference, and was happy to let me sleep on his couch for the week while he was away. Even more luckily, he lived about a 5 minute walk away from my apartment, meaning I was able to stay in the Bilk neighborhood that I’ve grown to love.

As this was my last full week (I left Germany on the 15th), there was not much work being done, mainly planning for when I got back. As a result of German holidays/exam period and the aforementioned conference, most of the department was gone, and so it was also quite silent during the workday. Nevertheless, I continued working on my writeup, although since the deadline was recently changed to the end of August, I was no longer quite so stressed as I had been before.

For the weekend, I headed to Aachen to see my friends one last time before I left, although due to the university exam period, we all ended up just working together rather than doing any sort of activities. Still, it was a great last trip to round out my summer in Germany.

On Monday, we had a laboratory dinner for me before I headed back to the USA early Tuesday morning, and it was wonderful final sendoff for my time in Düsseldorf. I really feel as though I understand what it means to conduct NLP research on a professional level, from project formation to submission, and I’m truly grateful to CURBS for allowing me to experience this through SUIRP. Even more importantly, the time I spent in Germany has allowed me to bring my thesis project to a level of completion I never would have been able to reach if I had done this work during the semester. Overall, it’s been an incredible time, and now that I’m back in the USA, I’m excited to continue refining my work and submit my final thesis in time for graduation in December.