May 25, 2004: Today was my first “real” day of work. I talked with my tech lead/mentor, Mala, about my responsibilities and about the project I would be working on with her. I’m not very clear on how much I can help, but apparently I will be making Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams to “document the current process flow.” It all sounds new to me, but hopefully I’ll gain a better perspective on everything after I begin working on it. I also met with the project manager, Raja, who told me not to worry about making mistakes. He understood that I am completely new to the working world, which made me feel a lot less apprehensive. I would rather not make mistakes, but it’s good to know no one will hold it against me if I do.
June 8, 2004: Our team that is working on Settlement held progress meetings today. We reviewed activity diagrams and the current state of the system. I walked the team through the piece that I reverse engineered, but it was difficult to know the level of detail I should go into. I have a hard time determining what each person’s technical capabilities are, especially when he or she comes from the business side of Freddie Mac. However, it went well overall and I have more confidence that what I have been working on for the last few weeks is truly helping the team with their job.
June 21, 2004: I met with a Freddie Mac intellectual property (IP) lawyer this afternoon. She explained the IP field to me, and explained how working for a corporation is very different from a law practice. I am taking every opportunity while I am here to talk to as many people as possible about what they do. As an intern, I feel I can approach anyone in the company and they are willing to help me out. It is very important to take an active role during the internship to find out about other people’s careers to get a better idea of where you may want your own career to go in the future. I’m still working on Settlement and reverse engineering their current process. The entire system is a mystery to me but at least some of the smaller pieces’ functions are becoming clear. One aspect of application development work at a large corporation is realizing how difficult it is to gain an overall perspective of what you are working on. The sooner you figure out that you cannot know everything, and that you must rely on other members of your team for their advice, the better off you will be.
July 14, 2004: Every intern was invited to a luncheon with the Rising Leaders at Freddie Mac today. The Rising Leaders are a group of employees who have only been with the corporation a few years and are usually fresh out of college. They are well known around the company even though the unit has only been around for a couple of years. Each member is recognized as having good leadership qualities even though he or she is not in a management position. If I am offered a full-time position with the company, this is definitely a group I want to be involved with. Everyone that I talked with from the group was very impressive both professionally and personally. I believe I could learn a lot from working with such a dynamic set of people.
July 28, 2004: Today started with a training session called “Thunderbolt Thinking” which all interns were expected to attend. We were taught how to “think outside the box,” as the usual business cliché goes, but we all had fun going through the process. Afterwards, a group of five interns and I had a meeting with Bill Deleo, who is the Vice President of Capital Markets Technology Services. He told us about his experiences and how we should expect the “unexpected” as we go through our own careers. This was a similar message to other people I spoke with over the summer, but once again it reinforced that no one can plan out exactly where their career will take them.
August 2, 2004: A terror alert was issued by the government indicating that financial institutions in the New York and Washington, D.C. area could be targets for attacks. Our company campus has extra security measures in place, and it took a long time to get through security this morning. I feel disconcerted about the terror warnings, but it is good to see extra precautions are being taken. My work continues on Hibernate, but generally the pressure is off me since I have less than two weeks remaining. All of the interns are excited about getting back to school and lunchtime talk is very open about how fast this summer went by.
August 5, 2004: I had my final review today with my supervisor, Cathy. I did very well this summer and I found out that in a few weeks I will be offered a full-time position for after graduation. This is exactly what I hoped for coming into the internship and I can’t wait to hear the full details. Although I loathe thinking about graduating from college, it will be great to have a job waiting for me when that time does come!
Section 4: Career Advice for Current Computer Science Students or return to the Table of Contents