It has been a big adjustment for me to go from working full time and living on my own, to working as an intern and sharing a room (although Christine is a great roommate and an excellent brownie-maker). Sometimes I crave alone time or space and it can be hard to find. However, I really love the sense of community here in Costa Rica and at Boston Scientific, Coyol specifically. We eat breakfast and lunch with our coworkers, taking a full hour to decompress and discuss our work and lives outside of work. This is a nice way to immerse myself in Costa Rican culture, learn some more Spanish, and get to know my coworkers on a more personal level. I feel comfortable approaching them with questions and ideas in the workplace because of the time we spend getting to know each other over each meal.
As an intern, I have flexibility that I might not otherwise have here at Boston Scientific. Because of the size of the company, the job roles are very specific. Although there is interdepartmental interaction, there is not as much fluidity between positions as there might be at a smaller company. As an intern, I am able to see a product in many phases of the product development process. This has been helpful in understanding the design and manufacturing stages from start to finish. Below are the phases of each project I am working on:
- Exploratory Phase: I am helping to choose and test new materials for a ureteral stent. The exploratory stage means it is very early on in the design process, so there are not many specifications and criteria that we have to abide by yet. This allows for more creativity in brainstorming ideas and testing methods.
- Early Product Development: This product has recently been transferred from Technology Development into Product Development, meaning the technology feasibility has been assessed and it is undergoing slight design changes as it is optimized for production. I am helping to prototype parts to test their functionality.
- End of Product Development: Boston Scientific acquired a small company that produced this device and is aggressively pushing toward launch by using the same suppliers and manufacturers that the previous company used. No design changes are being made. I am helping confirm that these suppliers are qualified and contacting them regarding lead time, cost, and production capacity for each part that they manufacture.
I am getting a better sense of how a large company functions and what aspects of the product development process are most exciting to me. I hope to continue getting exposure to the many job possibilities within the bioengineering field and hone in on what departments and positions interest me most.
Barrio Amón
This weekend we stayed in Escazú and took a day trip on Saturday into San José. It is a big and spread out city, so our friends from the short course recommended a few neighborhoods in particular to check out. We had previously gone downtown and seen the hustle and bustle of the capital. This weekend we walked through Barrios Amón and Escalante, both of which are upscale, hip and trendy, and full of restaurants, cafés, and large, beautiful homes. Barrio Amón was founded on the wealth of coffee growers, and has a few Victorian-style government buildings. We ate chifrijo for lunch in Barrio Escalante. Chifrijo is a typical Costa Rican meal of pork, beans, rice, and pico de gallo. Although these neighborhoods were not representative of how the rest of the city lives, it was interesting to see how the city is developing and I look forward to seeing more of this country.
Eating Chifrijo in Barrio Escalante