Name: Isabella Rowe
Class Year: 2023
Major: Economics and International Studies
Hometown: Roslyn, NY
Internship Organization: Bryn Mawr College Department of Economics
Job Title: Research Assistant
Location: Remote
What’s happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing!
I am working as a research assistant for Professor Sebastian Anti, one of Bryn Mawr’s professors in the economics department. With Professor Anti, I am conducting econometric research with a particular focus on road projects in Cambodia and their effects on women’s empowerment. To analyze these effects, I have been working on compiling an original dataset from other data resources, including the Civil Society Fund (CSF) in Cambodia, Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey (CSES), and the Domestic Household Survey (DHS). I have worked with statistical and mapping programs such as Stata and QGIS to draw a link between state-sponsored road projects and women’s empowerment in the home. This has involved heterogeneous analysis as well as writing up segments of the paper.
Why did you apply for this internship?
I applied for this internship because of my interest in econometrics and applied economics. Going into my senior year at Bryn Mawr, this internship has set me up nicely for my upcoming economics thesis, and I now know how to go about research in an efficient and organized manner which will be greatly helpful for this fall. Additionally, I was excited to work on a familiar topic and continue the work I had completed last summer.
Can you talk about the skills you are learning and why they are important to you?
Learning how to write an academic research paper has truly been an invaluable experience for me. It has allowed me to develop a passion for research, which I never knew I even had before. It has also greatly influenced the way I view my postgraduate experience and has made graduate school seem like the proper path for me. In addition to enhancing my coding skills, developing a sense for academic writing has been the greatest change to any work I’ve done in the past. I can now distinguish higher quality papers from lower quality ones and strive to produce a product that will be accepted into a more competitive journal.
What is something you have learned from your internship that you didn’t expect?
I have gained a great deal of independence from this internship, which I have not necessarily expected. I am a very task-oriented person and as such, I am used to following directions and completing what is asked of me. During my time at this internship, I have had fewer tasks with more abstract meanings, leaving it up to me to decide what to include with respect to the paper.
Visit the Summer Internship Stories page to read more about student internship experiences.