Prelude:

I had two weeks of free time before my summer internship starts, so I decided to do a solo trip to Mexico City for a week. It was scary at first because it was my first solo trip, but it turned out to be really really fun! I went to lots of museums, ate real tacos & churros, climbed the Teotihuacan pyramids (which I read about in my Spanish class in high school – it was great to experience it!), and met interesting locals. I met up with Tasha Russman’12 who works in the social enterprise sector in Mexico City. It’s wonderful to hear her post-Scripps stories and share our international experiences. This trip was important in orienting myself in midst of everything. Yes, school and homework and classes and career and family and friends and all your daily routines are important, but sometimes you get too absorbed and get drowned. I try to keep in mind David Wallace Foster’s quote, “This is water”. I needed to be alone, away from everyone and everything, to think clearly what I want, who I am, and where do I go from here. Anyway, I arrived at NYC refreshed and ready to start my internship.

My First Week:

The first day was mainly orientation: tour around the office, setting up work laptops, and filling out paper work. The second day I started working on my first code push. Every new software engineer [intern] does it to get familiarized with the procedures to push code into production. In other words, your code first gets checked by people, then get tested by automated tests, and finally goes live on the Internet. The required task was to put an image of myself on the about page, which basically meant inserting one line of code, so it was pretty simple. I felt accomplished to see my code gets approved and see my photo on the website that millions of users see. I met with my manager on the third day and we discussed a preliminary timeline for the summer. I spent the rest of my first week doing Android tutorials (which has 200+ pages). I had previous iOS experience from taking a mobile software development class at Pomona and developing the Motley Coffeehouse app last semester, but Android is something new to me, and it works quite differently. I felt excited to learn it, but at the same time stressed because I want to learn it as quickly as possible and learn it well. One thing I absolutely love about my office is that employees are allowed to bring their dogs. On a typical day, I will see 3 to 5 dogs hanging out around the office space. I like patting them when I am taking breaks from looking at the computer screen for too long. Another thing I get spoiled with is the endless supply of healthy snacks and drinks at the kitchen. And we have local businesses catered lunch (for 400+ employees!) twice a week. The food is AMAZING. Overall, my first week is fantastic 🙂

Doggie at Office

My office is close to Brooklyn Bridge

My desk (With the tutorial)