Mahan Mostafavi's Blog Post #3: Week Ending June 2, 2024 | 2024 Lehigh-in-Milan with Professor Gupta

Today will be the first day of the Corporate Social Responsibility, and I am excited to discuss with other students about some of the topics we’ve been discussing/writing about in our Wall Street Journal posts. This week I wrote about the “Loneliness of the American Worker,” and I found this article incredibly interesting and enriching to read and write about. I found it very compelling despite not being an employee. Additionally, I compared key issues in the American workplace and the Milan workplace, and I have come to realize that Italians value personal connections during work which help strengthen their relationships, efficiency, and mental health. I’m excited to continue to read more articles in the Wall Street Journal, as well as, reading other student’s posts during this summer semester.

While I haven’t attended the Internship Seminar with Professor Swain yet, I have heard many valuable comments from other students about the course. I’m excited to attend my first lecture this Tuesday and learn more about the work culture in Milan and the expectations I should hold for myself. While I am not working with other Italian co-workers, I would like to have a good relationship with Domenico by the end of this internship. Despite not having a work environment, I aim to retain all the information we learn in this class, as it can also be applicable in future jobs. From the last class, I heard that Professor Swain emphasized the importance of being proactive and seeking out work opportunities.

This week for my internship our main objective was to better understand the company’s goals and the project that I was tasked to do. My focus is on beach litter cleanup on various beaches/locations such as Venezuela, Catania, Kenya, San Diego, Kisumu, and Tunisia. Domenico provided me with more information and videos about the objective of the beach litter clean-up program through Metabolism of Cities. I compiled some research about microplastic, as well as, microplastic pollution near beaches and water for each of the locations Metabolism of Cities is helping. I’m excited to see what Domenico has planned for new tasks for me this week. I hope I will be starting some data analysis on the data he has provided me for the locations listed.

This weekend we have a hiking trip in the Alps and a zipline course planned. We woke up around 5:00 am to meet at the bus on Saturday morning and the guys and I almost didn’t make it, but I am happy we did. We started off the zip line course which was a lot of fun and had various difficulties. I am proud to say that I did all of the zipline difficulties; however, the highest level was closed. Maybe in the future, I’ll come back here to try it out. After doing the zipline course we had some time to walk around and eat lunch. The views are absolutely breathtaking. Shortly after, we started the hike which was about a 20-minute drive away. Unfortunately, I did not bring proper hiking shoes on this trip, so I did a lot of maneuvering on the path on my way to the lake. Sadly, I did not make it to the lake because the path became too dangerous and we had to turn around as a group, while some others got to make it to the end. This weekend was full of adventures and I hope to keep up the momentum with planning future trips.