The New TechnologistsThis internship was truly one of the greatest experiences of my life. At Microsoft, I had access to many resources and mentors. The New Technologists program was created 5 years ago by a former Microsoft Employee and an executive at Microsoft. They both realized that the graduates coming to find careers in Big Tech companies were not of the caliber or skill set that they wanted and this program was the answer. They wanted to train young college students early on in their college career so that they could gain experience in a company setting before working full-time. Being chosen to work for Microsoft as only a freshman was an honor and I was glad to be chosen.
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My WorkThe information that I learned as a New Technologist is second to none. To be trained directly from Microsoft employees was an experience that I could not have dreamed of when I began my freshman year. Our task for the summer was to build an iOS application prototype by first starting with a problem given to us. I learned a new programming language from scratch called Swift, which many iOS apps are written in. By the end of the summer I had become very proficient at it.
In school, we are given projects to complete that the professors give us, with guidelines and specific parameters that we have to follow. However, in this program we had the freedom to do anything that we wanted to in order to get the job done. Being in an environment like this was frightening at the beginning but at the same time, it was an inviting challenge. We had a lot of information to go through but got to think outside of the box in order to create a working product from scratch. |
KnowledgeDuring my time at Microsoft I learned many interesting new concepts. I learned a new programming language as well as how to build my own iOS app. I also learned the product life-cycle that companies use in order to sell a new product to a customer. Although these lessons were great, the best experience that I gained from this internship was learning how to work in groups. At UMD, we are discouraged from working with others on our code, so much so that we would be kicked out of the program if something like this were to occur. I was very used to working alone and getting my work done efficiently however in the real world, everyone works in teams. I had to learn to work together with my partners to get our product completed. This was a very difficult skill for me at first but by the end, we became a well-oiled machine. The biggest challenge for me was not only relying on others to get their work complete but was also trying to agree on a singular idea. There were many different instances where our team had contrasting viewpoints on how a certain aspect of the app would look and we learned to, stop, listen, communicate, and come to a compromise. Learning how to come together to form one idea is a skill I am glad to have now.
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