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.” :)

AHHHH I FAILED MY INTERVIEW

After a written application and an online interview, it was finally time for my on site interview!

For what, you may ask? I was applying for an internship position at Pivotal Inc., as an alumna of the Girls Who Code program they hosted last summer.

The internship would allow me work at the Pivotal office in downtown SF, coding for their open source cloud foundry. (Plus it was paid!!!!)

A timestamp of the interview and rest of the day follows:

7:00 AM - I review my slides to present to the interview panel. I basically cover two code projects I have worked on, and the current skills I am learning in AP Comp Sci at school.

1:30 PM - I leave Chem class and skip an in class essay to get going to SF.

2:00 - Sitting on BART with a zucchini plant.

2:30 - I enter the Pivotal office, which welcomes people with a bright green reception wall. My interviewer, Rupa comes to take me to the conference room. (Nope we did not come to the part of the blog title yet haha)

3:23 - I wrap up my presentation to Rupa and Cornelia, who I am pretty sure enjoyed my code projects (a health app and pun page).

Current emotional status: Okay, that wasn't too bad. Good job on presenting! They didn't seem bored at least. YOU GOT THIS :D

3:45 - I sit in the office kitchen taking a break, eating orchard peach sorbet and doing calculus homework. I am slightly nervous about the second half of the interview, which is technical pair programming with a developer. However, the very nice receptionist helps me microwave the frozen solid sorbet so it is more scoopable.

4:07 - My technical interviewer comes to get me, and we head into an office with two monitors. Surprise! I don't need to actually type -only voice my logic and the code out loud for him to type.

ALERT: An obstacle approaches. Do you take the left side, a technical interview designed for the high school interns (in Python), or the right side, a technical interview in Java that every adult Pivotal employee takes before being hired.

4:15 - I start to question why I turned right and if I know how to code in Java after all. I don't even need to type and I still stutter over my code. Then again, I never did TDD before, or much refactoring.

Current emotional status: ABORT! ABORT! Ahhh I can't code at ALL!!! APCS really ignores runtime efficiency :( HAHAHA why did I think I knew Java?

5:00 - whew the coding is over, and I passed the tests (with a lot of help).

5:15 - I get the speech where Pivotal is looking for interns that have a bit more experience, so that they do not have to invest too much time teaching us in the first place. Sigh.

5:16 - Waiting for the elevator, thinking about getting a job at Chipotle. Sighhhhh.

5:18 - A cool worker from Pivotal is also heading home and walks to the BART with me. She graduated from college last year, and is currently in the business department. I tell her how I failed the interview, and she laughs. She tells me how it is cool that I am already interviewing and a lot of positive comments that make me feel better.

5: 22 - I learn that she was actually rejected from Pivotal due to her lack of experience, but she wrote to the CEO about how she really wanted the opportunity. The company worked to create a new position for her to fill :O

5:24  - I also learn about her dating tribulations in Silicon Valley, and how every guy replies "machine learning" when she asks them what they do in their free time. "Boringggg," according to her. I am not too optimistic on my chances consequently, as machine learning sounds pretty cool :P

5:25 - We part ways amicably at the BART. I get on the wrong train with my zucchini plant. Sighhhh. Chipotle....

5:28 - I switch trains to the right one (finally). Time to begin the KDrama OST playlist to feel better. Sigh.

5:36 - An old chinese lady is staring at my zucchini plant. She murmurs something but Descendents of the Sun drowns out her words. I take out my earbuds and look inquiringly, but she shakes her head. "What did you say?" I ask in Cantonese. Her face lights up and she begins speaking in Canto. She calls me pretty, which I vehemently deny, and I wave as she leaves for her stop.

5:50 ish? - It's my stop. I wonder, will I gain experience if I don't get an internship (which requires experience) (which comes from an internship? )?

6 - Yay, I decide to take some coding courses over the summer at community college. Time to build up my skills :) Today was a good day, and I took away some valuable tidbits from the interview.

6:15 - But first, time to watch some Kdramas. I earned it.

Open Letter to the Mills Robotics Team (Electronics Deparment)

As you may be able to discern from the letter, our robotics team did not perform as well as we hoped at the Silicon Valley Regional. We had put in the hard work and struggles into getting a good robot done, but our efforts did not seem to pay off. Instead of having regrets or wishing that we had a bit more experience from attending other competitions, it is important to reflect back and come up with the next steps. 


Hi Electronics,

I wanted to thank you all for a very good season. We made great improvements within the department from previous years, so do not beat yourself up with the results from today's competition. You all helped create a better robot with a solid electronics board (no repairs needed!), the integration of more sensors, and even a button board. Although they weren't used to the fullest, it was a good step towards even better automation.

Our captain messaged me, and basically he said that he was proud of our department and that we should not feel that we held the team back in any way. In his own cheesy words "hold you head high and congratulations."

Of course, there are a lot of improvements that can be made to become an even stronger team, but rather than feeling down about our ranking or thinking about the what ifs or "ehh that was expected,"

please come up with more ideas and suggestions for our department. We will be having a meeting soon to plan out the rest of the year, decide on leadership positions, and come up with goals and steps we can take to achieve them.

Thank you!
Kaitlyn

TLDR: we will bounce back, but it is up to everyone to help out :P

a hiatus

The blogging has been put off for a while now due to the craziness involved in building a robot and organizing a hackathon.

The short version: I spent over 95 hours over the course of six weeks working with the robotics team to complete a robot from start to finish for the upcoming FIRST robotics competition. Concurrently, I had been collaborating alongside three other girls from different high schools to pull together a hackathon called FemHacks. It was a success!

The slightly longer version:

Build season: Going into the build season, our team felt apprehensive. Was it a fluke that we made playoffs at CalGames? Can we really build a decent robot? I think that we are often afflicted with the mentality that because we have less funding, because we have less mentors, because we are not a powerhouse robotics team, that there is no way we can build a decent robot. And to some extent, the fact that we are a team with less can affect our outcome. Our team captain kept us together. We made a plan, argued over whether or not to follow it, and started to build. I was running the electronics department for the first time, and I worried that I was talking to much or demonstrating too little. But through trial and error and countless Monday meetings, build season was getting things done. Thanks to parent volunteers and dedicated members, we stayed late almost everyday after school, testing autonomous, wiring efficiently, and troubleshooting the mechanisms. Miraculously, we were actually on track to finishing in time to test at a practice field, which provided valuable information on how to improve the climbing system. And now, after skipping meals, befriending other robotics teams, and literally invading the Maker Space with all our tools, we await the competition in late March. Wish us luck!

Femhacks: As for FemHacks, planning started around October or so, thanks to Stanford’s Girls Teacher Girls To Code liaison program. I was grouped with three other high school girls from the Bay Area to organize a hackathon, and it was a lot more self-directed than I expected. We had to contact companies to sponsor us, find a venue (mulesoft in sf), gather the attendees, and ask for workshops to be run. I must have wrote more emails during those months than the entire year before. I found that running an event such as FemHacks relied the most on communication between teammates and support staff. It was pretty amazing how four high schoolers pulled off the event for more than fifty girls and twenty adult mentors, and I am quite proud of everyone. The projects that were created during the hacking included carbon footprint calculators and interactive trading cards, and I could not be any happier with the results. Extra swag left over from FemHacks (t-shirts and stickers!) are an added plus as well. Stay tuned for a possible FemHacks 2.0 next year, and and Hour of Code coming sooner than that.

Sha-Sha-Shibuya!

Day 7: January 2

Our morning began with a crazy visit to see the Royal Family. Emperor Akihito appears only on his birthday, December 23, along with January 2 to celebrate the new year. Only on these two days does the Tokyo Imperial Palace open its inner grounds to the public. The experience was similar to Disneyland in that the crowds were extremely condensed and the lines neverending. However, there were no amusement park rides or souvenirs, only an endless supply of paper Japanese flags to wave around. Truthfully, it was a bit awkward to be Chinese American standing amidst intense Japanese nationalistic pride, but if you play the role of a clueless tourist everything works out.

Just like Disneyland! (Without the rides)

After the crowd stood in the sun for around half an hour, the emperor and his family came out onto a balcony protected with bulletproof glass. We were already squished person to person below the balcony, but when the royals stepped out, the intense roar of Japanese paper flags waving filled the air. After speaking in a dignified tone for five minutes (what about, I have no idea ) the emperor went back in, and then crowd dispersed.

Japanese nationalism

Following that slightly strange experience, it was time for all-you-can-eat Shabu Shabu. Contrary to what my dad thought, all-you-can-eat did not mean that plate of food is literally all-you-can-eat. The restaurant provided unlimited plates of raw slices of beef, pork, and chicken, which we cooked in a boiling pot of soup before dipping in a mixture of sesame oil, ginger, garlic, vinegar, and ponzu sauce. The dumplings and udon were also a great addition to the meal.

Lunch traffic. 

The afternoon was spent in Shibuya, the metropolitan area home to the famed Shibuya scramble crossing. At this intersection, hundreds of people build up on four corners (mainly from the subway stations and shops). Once the pedestrian light turns green, waves of people stream onto the road, crossing in all directions, including diagonally. (I suspected that a good percentage were tourists crossing multiple times, especially when I saw a group of people literally plop down in the middle of the street in order to take a picture).

Cool people.

Other highlights on the night included visiting Hachiko's statue, shopping at a 109 mall with crazy shopkeepers screaming about sales, and of course, exploring Daiso.

Daiso haul! -pens, stickers, notebooks...

Tokyo also hosted a large number of cat cafes :D We visited one on the 8th floor of a building, and the cafe met us with a mellow ambiance and cool jazz. After sanitizing our hands and changing our shoes for slippers, it was time to pet cats. Most of the cats rested in cat trees above the adoring cafe guests, but it must have been entertaining for them to watch the humans dance below holding cat toys and treats.

CAT CAFE!!!

Fluffy Tail

Sleepy cat

More sleepy cat

Day 8: January 3

Finally, it was time to experience the tasting of the main culinary item associated with Japan: sushi! At the Tsukiji Fish Market, famed for its tuna tossing auctions, tons of seafood stalls lined the streets, selling items such as scallops topped with sea urchin, broiled crabs, tuna steaks, lobster soup, dried squid, and sashimi. Stores sold out plenty of their products, with Vietnamese tourists literally packing their luggage to the brim with dried cuttlefish.

I see-food! (haha.)

After wandering through the alleyways and pondering which place to go eat at, we decided on a small sushi restaurant on the second floor of a building. Since we sat at the counter, we were able to view the sushi chefs assembling meals right in front of us. With their well-practiced motions, one chef sliced the sashimi, another formed rice mounds for the sushi, and a third artfully assembled rice bowls with slices of sashimi laid across the top. The chefs were amiable and kindly chatted with us on the different types of fish that we had no idea we were eating. The sushi tasted extremely fresh, and it made it difficult to imagine returning to SF to eat sushi made in the USA.

Sushi Masters

Assorted fish

A subway ride later, we made it to Roppongi Hills, the place where the famed scene of the Tokyo skyline was shot. More new year's celebrations were underway and we enjoyed free entertainment consisting of traditional Japanese music, lion dances, and TAIKO. The taiko drumming was especially fun to watch, as the beat of their drums literally shook the audience.

New year's lion biting away bad luck.

BOOM

Taiko is a full workout

Tokyo Tower and a view of our feet standing atop a glass floor :O

 

More food for the carnivores. 

Day 9: January 4

At last, our final day in Japan had arrived. Since we had to reach Narita Airport, about an hour long bus ride from Tokyo, by the afternoon, there was only some time to explore the Tokyo Station after we had finished packing and cleaning the apartment.

Candy rolling station.

The station had a countless number of shops, but the best part was an area called "Character Street." There, stores sold merchandise from all the famous Japanese cartoons and characters, such as Studio Ghibli, Rilakkuma, Hello Kitty, and various animes. I probably would have spent my life savings buying keychains and notebooks, but it was time to eat lunch before traveling to the airport.

ahhh I want all of them!

It was a strange but delicious lunch of Okinawa cuisine, which included a bowl of ramen along with something that suspiciously tasted like Taco Bell without the tortilla. Alas, it was time to head back to the airport for our flight. Thank you Japan for an exciting adventure! 

Ramen and...Taco Bell?

Back in SF! (Featuring the Japanese wrestling team)