Over this summer, I had the great opportunity to work at a Fortune 500 tech company in Silicon Valley. Being from Wisconsin, I was uncertain as to several things:

• How far is Cupertino from San Francisco?
• How does one go about long-distance apartment hunting?
• How exactly was I going to get around?

The answers to these questions, unfortunately, were not what I’d hoped for, but instead what I had kind of feared would be the case. San Francisco was too far away to be plausible for visits except on the weekends, long-distance apartment hunting was stranger and more difficult than I had ever anticipated, and getting around ended up being a nightmare. But even more unexpected was that despite all these (and more) issues, my internship experience was one of the most rewarding I’ve ever encountered.

But before I talk about the internship, I’ll tell you something. Moving, on your own, without your parents, is HARD. Since I found out that I would be interning in April, I had to scramble to find a place to stay. I knew very few people in the Bay Area, but the people I did know were absolutely wonderful, and asked around for me. Nothing really came of that.

It came to a point at the end of April where I realized that nobody was going to do this for me. I had to go outside of my nice little comfort zone at Scripps and rely on only myself. That was a frightening epiphany, but also a freeing one. It wasn’t just that nobody could help me- I was completely independent in this pursuit of an apartment! Of course, I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking for an apartment without any help was one of the first steps I took to realizing my own independence.

Finally, I felt that I had it all settled. I had contacted a woman through Craigslist, and it looked like we would get along. She sent me pictures of my room, was in contact for about two weeks, and said she would hold the place for me until I got there with no back pay. I was excited- she had two cats, and lived near some of my friends in Los Gatos.

Then a week, and then two, went by and I heard nothing from her. I emailed her four or five times asking what had happened, called her, and she finally got back to me two weeks before I was scheduled to leave school. She had found somebody else, she said, that was willing to pay more than what I had agreed to. She sent my check back and didn’t apologize. I never heard from her again.

Then the real panic started. I had nowhere to live. I asked all of my friends, everybody I knew at Harvey Mudd (who sends a lot of people to Google and other Silicon Valley corporations) if they knew somebody looking for a roommate. One last desperate status on Facebook finally got me a break; a friend of a friend of a friend was looking for somebody to move in until September. I would be living with two men I didn’t know for the low, low price of $1200/month. It was the best rent I could find on such short notice. Fine, I said. I’ll take it.

And thus my summer-long adventure began. It was already replete with panic and what felt like a giant misstep. I didn’t know where I was going, or who I’d live with, or what the company was like. All I knew was that it was a great and fortuitous opportunity, one I couldn’t pass up, that would hopefully kickstart my career.