To Summer-ize the Past Two Weeks…

A steady cycle of work, side jobs, and studying has lulled on for the past two weeks, contributing to an almost school-like hum of productivity…

...Just kidding. Although all of the above activities have been going on, I have also be sure to keep up on my reading (How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie) and television shows (Great British Baking Show + various Korean dramas)!

Office life has been amusing, aside from staring at a screen for eight hours a day. Sure, the intern life has been a little rocky, especially after uploading forty-four incorrect code files to the online management system, and having to delete the files one by one (a process that sent an annoying responsible email that  read: “Kaitlyn has removed one file from assignment ----!”), there have been some perks of being an intern as well.

For one, we are able to listen in on the juiciest of conversations, as full-timers seem to think that since we’ll disappear in about six weeks, there’s no harm in chatting to/in front of the intern. The office dynamic is certainly friendly, but the gossip is what makes it amazing. Furthermore, lunch plans between employees seem to begin around 10 in the morning, approximately an hour after arriving at work. Ping pong breaks and listening to stories of biking through Alaska also provide mental relief from continuous keyboard pounding.

A bout of existentialism has suddenly washed over me, but talking about it over boba with a friend has soothed mild panic about the meaning of life. It can be scary to imagine how you are a tiny, insignificant speck of dust in the universe, and how an entire life will consist of work, play, happy memories, and sad memories, until you exist no more. It can also feel futile, like how after attending my brother’s UCSD graduation, and seeing all the highly educated PhD and Master graduates all in one room, the world is still as it is. Therefore, even after striving to become highly educated, an impact is still hard to make. Despite these thought, I’ll continue to try to work hard, express gratitude, and find a job that I enjoy and feel meaning in. I will also practice the tips to become a master manipulator and cunning conversationalists, in order to fulfill my dreams of world domination ୧ʕ•̀ᴥ•́ʔ୨

Camera Roll Dump

Yes, I would like to learn how to apply for a patent!

Presenting in the Capitol

Jackie Speier

CAC Girls

MRT Team

MRT Managers

The Washington Monument

CAC Winners

Panel! 

Chinatown

SCOTUS

Spot the secret service

underground passage

D.C. cherry blossoms

Girl Up!

Art museum?

More Art

Airplane View

MRT at Silicon Valley Regional ft. cupcakes

Memes

NCWIT group :)

Heather @Femhacks!

SUMMERRR

School has finally ended, as well as any form of standardized testing imaginable. The first week of summer has passed, and it already feels like the season is moving too quickly. Strangely enough, the end of school and the beginning of summer was not as big of a transition as I thought it would be. It feels as if everyone took the pledge to not “slack off” this summer, by getting a job, taking classes, or even writing their own book. Of course, there is still time for family hikes and watching movies, in the absence of homework assignments…(except summer reading and college essays) :/

Still, summer is ultimately a welcome change in the pounding, monotonous cycle of school. I got to watch a new television drama, check out more BOOKS from the library, try new restaurants with my family, and wander around town exploring with friends. Though only a week has passed, it feels as if events worth an entire month unfolded.

Things that have happened (in no particular order):

• I dyed red streaks into my hair!
• Saw all my senior friends graduate from high school, suffer at a countless number of grad parties, and fantasize about their new lives once in college.
• Attended the orientation (read: tea party) for the Girls’ State program that I will be attending this summer. Although the meeting gave off a patriotic and culty vibe, with a room full of women either under the age of 18 or over the age of 60 pledging allegiance to the flag, I am still excited to head down to So-cal for Girls’ State. Though I still have an aversion to politics, hopefully this experience of simulating government will teach me to see the practice as something other than meaningless argument.

More tech events! (as expected XD)

• This is really overdue, but during spring break I traveled to D.C. for the Congressional App Challenge. Despite it being slightly disconcerting to have high school peers from across the nation hand you their business card for their latest start-up, it was still amazing to stand beside so many other driven students to present our app inside the Capitol, and to listen to a great panel that introduced me to the idea of civic tech. D.C. is an extremely different place away from the Bay Area bubble, but it was still fun to pose with the cherry blossoms and eat tiny side dishes while “networking.” The most entertaining part of the trip, aside from seeing all the other winners’ projects, must have been seeing the comedic flurry of parents trying to conduct a photoshoot for their child when the image of their project appeared on the screen of the congressional hallway. I was also a bit starstruck to meet Jackie Speier and John Lewis, whom I wrote a report on in eighth grade. It was also an honor to run the Girls Who Code social media accounts, and meet other girls from the organizations that I received support from, such as NCWIT and GWC.
• I also volunteered at Microsoft’s STEM exploration event for girls, meeting a lot of faces I have heard about in the tech community. The booths included painting in VR and experimenting with arduinos, which tempted me to switch from volunteer to attendee status. Nonetheless, I helped out at the Unity station, which involved the girls building their own video game in a 2-D environment. It was awesome to witness how tech savvy the girls already were, and how cute the parents were in taking pictures of their daughters.
• Right after Microsoft, I met up with the Girls Teaching Girls to Code group at Stanford. We briefed each other on how our hackathons went, and brainstormed the idea to pull together a large scale one for next year. I also learned about various senior pranks (involving cows on rooftops) and how one of the dorm rooms at Stanford is haunted.
• Maker Faire = cool as usual :D and got to make paper rockets
• Robotics outreach at the local middle school, in order to recruit some more kids for next year. Only about 8 kids decided to stay after school to listen to us, but they had fun looking at the programming board, testing out a shooting prototype, and driving around the robot. They seem like a promising bunch for next year, and hopefully more kids will join as well, given the turnout for the Hour of Code that we hosted earlier in the month.
• Last, but not least….Superposition! Yes, it’s another hackathon hosted by my friend at the Foster City Library, and I definitely had to stop by for some more stickers and swag -I mean the learning experience of course :) I unfortunately couldn’t not hang around long enough to hack a project, but I did end up helping an underclassmen from our school get starting on building a website for our leadership class.  

Things I am learning (or want to)

• Remember that extra dramatic blog post from last month about how I utterly failed the Pivotal interview? Well, I still failed the interview and didn’t get the job. But, I applied for another internship at a different software company and I started working last Monday! The workers there, although older than me by at least a decade, are extremely nice and helpful. Despite understanding only about 60% of the work terms and use-cases and feature requests flung my way, hopefully that number can rise to 75% by the end of next week. Although it is not easy learning multiple platforms just to be able to work on the code, the environment is a very welcoming place to get started. I’m not sure how much I can disclose without getting yelled at by the security team (or my boss), but I basically use R and Shiny to write web apps for hospitals to analyze their data to see if they are doing their job. The people I work with also have a lot of insight on the Silicon Valley culture in general, and speaking to them really opens up ideas that I never thought of, though they seem obvious to me now. The corporate culture and capitalist nature of work is a bit draining only after my first week, so while writing the software is fun, and working 40 hour weeks on minimum wage is still considered a valuable experience by me, I am not sure how long that technology entrepreneurship will hold up for me as a potential career path, given the cutthroat atmosphere about it.
• For some reason, I am really intent on raising money this summer, so I also work two part time jobs. One is watering the gardens for my neighbors when they go on vacation, which is extremely relaxing. The other is tutoring a student on reading and writing, and it should be enjoyable to re-read all my favorite childhood books.
• Admitting to my hypocritical views on being a “workaholic” during the summer, I am also taking a community college course on Ruby. Eh, the course description for the online class looked interesting, and I hear Ruby is a fun language used in web dev…?
• A long list of books and Studio Ghibli movies to dive through - I hope my poor eyes don’t wear out after staring at a computer all day.
• Also working to revamp the school newspaper and robotics team this summer :D
• Still on my list from last summer is to learn more about VR and astronomy -can’t wait for the meteor showers!
• Other goals include learning the guitar, meditation, playing more piano, riding a motorcycle, running everyday (oops), and starting team tennis practice.

And yay! The first week of summer has already been pretty crazy with events and responsibilities, but if you have fun, other people can’t “yuck your yum.” :)