Intern Experience Manu Srivastava Hiroshima University

Intern Experiences Summer 2018

Hiroshima University, Japan

Manu Srivastava

Process of securing the intern:

It was mostly apping. I came across this exchange program called ILDP which Hiroshima University has with many Indian universities. Had to choose a prof from the list provided and ask him if he was willing to accept me as an intern. Once I had his approval, I submitted the required documents to the Dean IR office and waited to see if I was selected.

What was I working on?

Mine is a theoretical internship on elementary particle physics.

Workload:

At present, I am about 2 weeks old in the internship. It has mostly been a study material suggested to get the basics (that you do not know already) to be prepared for some problem statement ahead. It is a 6-week intern and I have to be in the lab from 0900 to about 1800 with lunch in between. But it is not very strict. I can stroll around, take a break in between as I wish. Maybe this is the difference in a work internship and a study/research internship. I have not worked with any special instruments as such.

Courses that helped me:

QM 1 is helping a lot. I have use of Special Relativity also.

What did I learn during the internship?

First of all, knowing English doesn't mean that you can communicate in Japan. The food here is also not great. But I have realised that nature is very easily satisfied. The food or the facilities need not be great to keep us happy. Challenging situations teach us how little we actually need, and how much extra we usually have.

Places that you visited during the intern/ activities that you did

In the 2 weeks so far, I have already roamed around the Saijo area a lot and watched a baseball game in the stadium here. But the best experience so far was the Shimanami Kaido. It was 76 km trail which I cycled through starting at 9.30 in the morning and ending at about 5.30 in the evening. The route crosses several islands via bridges across them. The road is mostly along the coastline and the scenic beauty is mesmerising. And for the length and the ups and downs of the cycling, I had to push my limits. It wasn't easy. I was late by about an hour for a bus that I had to take in my return journey and google maps showed no other return way for that day. But the Japanese are a very helpful species of people. I managed my way back changing busses and routes on the way. It was the first major solo trip of mine and turned out to be a very memorable one. I have some time left in the internship and hope to explore more of the Hiroshima Prefecture.

Expectations from the internship before starting and now after starting

I expected studying my way through the internship as it is a theoretical one, and till now it has been that way. But I expected that things would have been planned, all ready for me to do or study, but it has turned out to be the other way.

Contact details: 

manu2cricket@gmail.com, 9987106602.