Intern 2021: Meetups!
Published 8/07/21
Progress
It has been a long three weeks, but the JSO serializer is essentially complete! It round-trips blocks and variables correctly, throws informative errors when it runs into issues, and includes hooks for serializing plugins. All that's left to do on that front is get my PRs merged into my feature branch!
After that, I will work on updating Blockly's internal uses of the XML system to instead use the JSO system instead. And then I will be doing a heck-ton of documentation updates.
Meeting People
My internship hosts are awesome. They are super responsive and friendly. They are always willing to help with technical questions. And they've gone above and beyond to introduce me to people. As such, I wanted to take some time to celebrate that!
Since starting my internship I have met so many people, which is something I truly didn't expect. My internship hosts have basically set me up with weekly meetups, and they have been so much fun. I've gotten to learn about so many different jobs (tech lead, program manager, project manager, technical writer, UX designer, etc). And I've gotten to learn about so many projects, and how they interrelate. All of the people I've met with have been incredibly nice and happy to answer my questions. I am so thankful for this experience.
I've also had a lovely time getting to know my internship mentor. At Google you are assigned two internship hosts, which deal with your technical assignment, and an additional internship mentor. Your mentor works outside your team, and is supposed to introduce you to Google culture, and help you maintain your wellbeing. My mentor Xindi (pronounced sin-dee) is so nice and it's really fun to talk to her each week. She has even invited me to shadow one of her team's meetings, which I am so excited to do!
One thing that I especially appreciate Xindi doing is encourage me to reach out to other people at Google (besides the people I've been directly introduced to). Google tries to maintain a culture where "anyone can message anyone". And so far, I've definitely found this to be the case! Last week I reached out to Ian Lance Taylor, who works on the Go programming language, and we had a lovely chat where we talked about programming language design, higher education, and all sorts of fun stuff.
I did not think that meeting new people would be such a big part of my internship, but I am so so thankful that it is. I have had so much fun getting to learn about people, their jobs, and their projects.
I sincerely appreciate the opportunities I've been given. And I'll try my best to keep making the best of those opportunities!