Post #10 - Final Reflection

I have been working here at NC State for a total of 201 hours (35 Days/2 Months). I came here hoping to learn how to work in a UNIX environment, but I learned much more than that. Not only did I learn how to navigate through a UNIX/Linux operating system, I learned how to program in Python, Graphviz, C, and Bash Script. I'm sure that there is no way that I would have learned this stuff if I had taken another internship. It is true that this internship didn't have many perks as opposed to many other internships. Sarat told me that there is a trade off, "You can do what you love for little reward, or you can settle for a job you won't enjoy as much that has more reward." I got the opportunity to work in a university lab with a bunch of graduate students, doing real programming work. Not many high school students can say that.

In a nutshell: I have enjoyed working here at NC State with Aishwarya, Kevin, Sarat and Dr. DeCarolis. I have learned a lot; the things that I have learned here will definitely help with school, college and future job opportunities.

Post #9

Dates: 7/27/11 - 8/01/11

Activities: Code Cleanup and Debugging

Technical Information: Python/Graphviz, TEMOA

Reflection: I am wrapping up my job here and NC State and I am glad to say that Aishwarya and I have accomplished our long goal. Our task was to give the TEMOA Project a nice graphical interface (much harder than it sounds). We have managed to accomplish this task and we even added a few of our own features to enhance the models. I am spending my last week searching for errors in the energy models, and documenting any undocumented code. I also got a chance to go on the NC State Campus tour and saw centennial campus which had a bunch of businesses such as Red Hat or Gold Leaf.

The things that I have done here that make me proud are the facts that I learned a lot and that I made a contribution to a real world project (as opposed to a school project or activity).