Tag Archives: Google

Google Scholar’s Retreat

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Selected as a 2014 Google Anita Borg Scholar, I was awarded a $10,000 scholarship and offered the opportunity to attend the annual Google Scholar’s Retreat. Google offers scholarships to female, veterans, disabled and other underrepresented students studying computer science in both undergraduate and graduate institutions. I’d definitely encourage Scrippsies to apply! I was actually quite surprised to know that I was selected, because I know many intelligent, well-qualified candidates from Pomona and CMC applied and only made it to the finalist round. This is an amazing opportunity and I am glad that I am representing Scripps in the community of scholars. The scholar’s retreat is a 4 day all expense paid event hosted at Google’s headquarter in Mountain View, CA.

We started the first day with ice breakers, welcome speech and some social activities. The second day consists of panel from previous scholars, technical workshops, brainstorming activities to bring back to our campuses, and a tour of Google. The third and fourth day are hackathon, a long period of programming to build something cool. It was an empowering experience for me to get to know a community of computer scientists who overcame/ are overcoming many struggles (physical, mental, societal) to pursue their goals and dreams. I learned about some cutting edge research that scholars are doing in different fields within CS; I was particularly impressed by a scholar’s research in applying robotics to help autistic children. I learned that the community of coders could and should look very different from what it is now. We need more diversity in the group of people who have the power to lead the future with technology. I also grew as a programmer through the 2-day hackathon, I learned to work with people whom I just met, and had really different background and expertise than me. It was quite challenging throughout the process; we had to come up with a good idea, establish an actionable plan, divide the labor, execute the plan well, and practice presenting. At the end, I gained a new sense of confidence to participate in more hackathons in the future and I came back with many ideas to promote code-literacy in Scripps in the fall! 🙂

Anita Borg Scholars

2014 Anita Borg Scholars
(I am in the middle/left in the front row)

Hacking Away

I am hacking with my teammate (Sorry I had my back towards the camera).

Presenting

Presenting our iOS app “CSinder” to judges

Dinosaur

Dinosaur spotted at Google

To Google or Not to Google?

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As I get ready to study abroad in Ireland next semester, another thing that has been hanging over my head is the question of what I want to do next summer. If I could get an internship in the Boston area then I could live at home and spend more time with my parents, sister, and the cat that I miss so much before coming back to Scripps for my senior year.

You can see why I miss this one. [Photo courtesy of my sister, Caitlin]

My mom mentioned that Google has an office in Cambridge, so I decided to interview my friend and fellow Scrippsie, Briana Smith who worked as a web development intern at Google’s Mountain View headquarters last summer. I’m not a computer science person, but the internet and new technology are really interesting to me, so the thought of working somewhere like Google has been on my radar for a little while now.

Megan: How hard and/or stressful did you find the application/interview process? (If at all?)

Briana: I’ve heard many horror stories of the Google interview process being passed around, but I actually enjoyed mine. Granted, it was much longer than usual. I had 4 interviews total, 2 with a department I didn’t end up working in, and 2 from managers on the team I was placed with.

M: What was your favorite part of the internship?

B: Food. Google has a policy that their employees should never be more than 150 ft. away from food while on their campus and it was wonderful.

More seriously, the learning opportunities were unmatched. I left with an entirely new skill set that I didn’t even know existed. I went into the summer expecting to work hard, but I didn’t realize how much autonomy and creative freedom I would have. GoogleEDU is an internal service for employees to take classes in just about any subject you can imagine. I appreciated that this culture of constant learning was such an integral part of the experience.

M: What was your least favorite part?

The campus is HUGE and getting bigger every day. My team was relocated just days before I arrived to a location two freeway exits away from main campus. There were shuttles constantly moving between the campuses, but still transportation to and fro could be a real time-waster.

M: Did your internship influence what you want to do after graduation?

One of the most valuable parts of my internship was the personal growth. Working and living independently and full time at Google helped me realize some of the things that I do and do not want to do with my life after graduation. Education doesn’t stop when I graduate and I need to have opportunities for personal and professional growth wherever I go. I know that I will work in the tech industry. Working at Google helped me see that there is a different kind of corporate that is alive and well in the tech world.

Google’s Boston office [photo from their website]

If I don’t intern at Google (or somewhere else in the Boston area), and instead go back and work at camp for a third summer, I will be committing to spending no more than six weeks at home between now and the winter break halfway through my senior year. That would be a lot of time away from home, and I’m not sure it’s what I want to do, even though I love camp. I think the Google internship would be a great alternative, and a really good experience, based on what Briana said. Now I just need to do the application…

[Please note: interview responses were edited for the sake of length. And many thanks to Briana for sharing her experiences!]