End-of-Summer Reflection

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Hello there, It's been a while since my last post, so I thought I would reflect briefly on what I've been doing this summer and what my plan is for the next couple of months. My internship at Cadence ends next Friday, the 17th, and the first day of my university is the Thursday following that, the 22nd.

My internship experience this summer has been a pretty positive experience. I went to the office regularly and had a chance to meet the members of the San Jose team. I often met and had lunch with the two other interns on our team in the office breakroom or in the campus cafeteria; we got along pretty well, fortunately. I found my work quite engaging and interesting, especially since I was writing code and adding features to a program of manageable size. In addition to weekly intern meetings, my manager(s) shared invitations with me for larger team meetings, in which the team discussed bugs, new features, and progress updates. By attending these meetings, I was able to understand the nature of team collaboration, and the nature of the interaction between customers, the marketing group, and the engineers. Furthermore, I am being compensated at what seems to me like an unreasonably high rate, though it is the typical amount for software engineering interns. But I'm not complaining :)

Let's talk about university now. I have planned a fairly heavy courseload for the next three quarters in order to be able to graduate by next June. My plan is also contingent on me receiving the courses that I wish to take. I know that managing my courses will be tough, but I hope that I will make it through and learn some relevant new concepts in the process. I think I'll also apply to graduate school this fall, which is something I have been considering for a while. If not graduate school, I would like to go for a software engineering job, maybe in the same team as I am in now, if possible.

My parents are returning next week from their visit to India. My mom is bringing a book of Premchand's stories from India, which I am excited to read. The week after that I'll be settling into university, which is something I am quite looking forward to. Needless to say, the next couple of weeks are going to be rather hectic and exciting.

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