By Jason Scheele
This summer I worked in at the Institute of Aviation in Warsaw, Poland. During my time at the Institute of Aviation, I worked on modeling the forces on a helicopter blade during flight using a series of computer programs called Computational Fluid Dynamics. The work I completed this summer granted me an in depth look at the programs used in the aerospace industry today. I also gained first-hand experience solving real-world problems from start to finish, which will benefit me for the rest of my career in aerospace engineering.
Luckily, I lived close to the center of Warsaw, only having to travel 20 minutes on the tram. Nearly every day after work, I traveled downtown to explore Warsaw and experience the Polish culture. I very quickly fell in love with the city of Warsaw because of its amazing public transportation system, cleanliness and of course the delicious traditional food that could be found all over the city. I found the Polish people to be extremely friendly and I was quite relived that nearly everyone spoke English, especially if they were under 30.
I also traveled to the Polish cities of Krakow and Lublin. I enjoyed the lively nature of Krakow and had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz. I believe that everyone should travel to Auschwitz once in their lifetime because the absolute magnitude of the death camp cannot be portrayed through any media, only by going there personally. Lublin, on a brighter note, was an amazing small town in the southeast of Poland and seemed to be a great place to raise a family or attend a university.
Outside of Poland, I also traveled to Amsterdam, Brussels, Prague, Budapest and Lviv, Ukraine.
I am extremely grateful to the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at the Ohio State University and especially the Polish Studies Initiative for the amazing opportunities that it provided to me, traveling through Europe this summer truly gave me a much broader prospective of the world, all of the different cultures, languages, and individuals that live here. It was a truly amazing summer thanks to the PSI.