It's been pretty hectic. When I first looked at what I wanted to do for my internship, I thought that programming was going to be my expertise. However, when I arrived at the company, and I talked to all of the resident programmers, I knew I was out of my depth. I guess I expected it a bit, that I wouldn't really be able to contribute to the programming side of things. After hanging out with my mentor for a day though, I had a good idea of what I could do to help. My mentor is the Vice-president of Sales, in a department of two, so he knows a pretty good deal about sales and marketing. I took one look at all the problems they were having, and I suggested that I could make advertisements. Mike was pretty happy with that idea, and my first draft or two looked pretty good. I don't know if they were as good as some of the ones the web-designer made, but I liked them, and so did my mentor, Mike. I started in on making the banners and other ads, and Mike gave me an account to an video tutorial website. I completed the Google Adwords training and browsed some of the cool Photoshop and Logo Design tutorials. I was pretty happy with the progress so far, and I think the skills I have learned can already be applied to other aspects of my life.
 
When I was dropped off, it seemed just like a big old office area, with tan walls for about 500 feet in either direction. When one of my contacts came down to let me in, I felt a bit less nervous, and it only got better after that. We walked through a reception area that was being renovated, into a open space office area with computers everywhere. Most stations had 2 monitors, but some had 3 or 4. It was a cool introduction into the tech-savvy world of networking. All the people I met and introduced myself too were nice, and all looked very interested in their work and the computers in front of them. When we got to the area I would be working in, Mike took me around the entire building on a little tour. They had a break room with a pool table and arcade machines, and a lot of empty space. Then we checked out the 6 server rooms they have, which all have raised flooring and giant AC and Power generators. When we got back, we set up a workstation for me, and I started to browse their website, looking for things I wanted to know, or things that didn't look quite right. With that list, some of the web designers fixed a couple of tiny bugs and changed some of the colors of the page. I was kind of worried that I wasn't doing enough to help, or that I didn't have enough knowledge about networks to really help out. Then again, I'm pretty tech-savvy and I'll probably be able to contribute at least something to the company.
 
  • Hopefully I will be interning at Cari.net, a network and cloud hosting company.
  • My mentor will possibly be Mike Dowdy.
  • Creating pieces of code to improve the efficiency of their work practices.
  • Some more about server hosting and improve my programming logic.
  • That my attitude will not be professional enough.