The Central Bohemian Innovation Center does a multitude of things for its startups. It holds investment fairs where startups can connect with people that are looking to fund new ideas. CBIC also helps form a well-structured and stable team that can help further develop the product, from practical design to marketing and business tactics. Personally, I do not know of programs specifically like this at Pitt/in Pittsburgh. There is research funding that is like CBIC, an ELPE office to help find Co-Ops and internships, and many opportunities so join a startup as a team member. Starting said startup, however, is not something that is big through the Swanson School of Engineering.
In our language class, it was really interesting to hear how Slavic-based languages differ from many other languages. Although Czech does give gender to everything like in romantic languages such as Spanish or Italian, its other parts of sentences also change based on context. Instead of sentence structure being focused on word order (like English), Czech is flexible, using grammatical case to convey word function. Verbs show the meaning of he subject. Also, I crushed everyone on the leaderboards with ease while they all struggled to keep up with me. Someone run me my certificate for being fluent ASAP.
Well, other than thinking the Czech Republic would be a lot warmer this time of year, I also thought this nation was a lot more city-centric. This is not the case, with large parts of the country’s culture coming from the environment. The craziest tradition I heard is the mushroom race, which is just insanity to visualize. I can’t even imagine running into my neighbor’s yard to get the best mushrooms — as a national tradition.
Not super excited for tomorrow (because the Holocaust is so depressing), but I am looking forward to learning about the history and honoring the brave Jews and Ally members that died or survived WWII.
‘Til next time!
Swanson School of Engineering 