What does your daily work life look like on Internship? 
As an intern at UNESCO Paris, most days start with catching up on emails and keeping a close track of the work I am due to deliver. There are days when I find myself working on only one project and days when my work tracker sheet is put to the test. My tasks range from conducting background research to close reading/editing of publications. There is a fair amount of reading of past and current work of UNESCO, its partners and other agencies in order to be able to carry out tasks like the preparation of presentation slides, concept notes, and other working documents. I attend weekly team meetings, including any external meetings for specific projects that I am on. 

What advice do you want to share with IEDP first-year students as they end their first fall semester?
To the first years, as you prepare to start your second semester at IEDP – firstly, mixed-method research (qualitative + quantitative) is widely used in the real world. It is true when it’s said that it is not always possible to do a high-quality RCT. Agencies do depend on qualitative studies (with a splash of quant in there) to make a case for a particular issue. If you are able to, hone your mixed-method research skills during your time at Penn, I’d say it’s a pretty solid skill to leave with. Secondly, I am glad that during my second semester I made a cheat sheet on what technical M&E terms mean and imply, like p-value, co-efficient, etc. I kept this on my laptop’s notes app and have been referring to it since. Third, it’s never too early to start working on your Proseminar paper.