A Busy Second Term + JobMine Round 2

As you can probably tell from the lack of posts since the beginning of May, this summer has been a busy one as I dove headfirst into my second school term. After a comparatively relaxed co-op term, the schoolwork took us all by storm and we returned to the seemingly endless cycle of labs, assignments, and quizzes. Now that it's already a week after midterms and just over a month until school finishes once again, I thought I'd write up some updates.

1B Term
Second term has been going really well so far; I feel that the courses are more interesting than in 1A, and we're learning a lot more completely new material (compared to reviewing high school topics for half of last term). This term has involved a lot of math, with both Calculus and Discrete Math courses; Discrete Math has been all about logic, from proving various integer relations to even a bit of basic cryptography. The proofs can get quite difficult at times, but it's been a refreshing break from calculus. Then, extending from last term are continuations of Physics, Circuits, and Programming. As Circuits mainly involves digital logic this term, the circuits labs have been really cool; we are working with VHDL to program circuit boards to simulate different tools such as a car controller, an elevator controller, etc. While I still prefer software over hardware development, the experience designing circuits and then interacting with hands-on controls has been a very fun experience.

Although the workload has increased quite a bit, I feel like I was better prepared for it and thus adjusted faster to the workload, as I've gotten used to what has to be done by when in order to finish everything on schedule. While the assignments have gotten more difficult, I've found the content across all courses to be a lot more interesting. Of course, there are still lectures that are hard to sit through, as well as professors that may not teach in the most easy-to-understand fashion; the 8:30 to 4:30 days aren't very enticing, but all in all I think this term has been much more enjoyable than 1A.

Revisiting JobMine

While May consisted mainly of getting back into academic mode, June was spent prepping for the second round of JobMine, which meant updating resumes and prepping for interviews. They say that finding your next co-op job should become easier as you gain more experience, but I actually felt more pressured this term to find a job that I wanted. Last term, I didn't really have any expectations of where I would end up working, but after working in a development role, I wanted to find another, hopefully better position, and so I dedicated probably even more effort to JobMine this round than last.

I was definitely more selective when applying to jobs this round, making sure that I only applied for development positions at companies that I was really interested in. Since I worked on web application development last term, I hoped to gain experience working in mobile development. In terms of my resume, since I now had relevant work experience, I was able to remove some older, less applicable experience from my resume and focus the information on development-related activities. I also made it appear more polished by updating the font and some styling. Throughout the job application period, I attended many employer information/networking sessions to talk with different team members, learn more about companies, and even give out my resume. This was really helpful because not only did I get a better sense of the company, I got to talk with the actual people that I could potentially be working with.

I ended up receiving eleven total interviews sporadically through the next few weeks. Since I now had programming experience, I knew that the interviews would be more focused on technical questions. And so, I prepared quite a bit for my interviews, especially for the first few. I found that brushing up on the specifics of major object-oriented programming concepts helped a lot; since I didn't use certain concepts very much throughout co-op, it was a good reminder of things that I'd previously learned. The interviews this round were definitely longer and more intensive, but I gained a lot of valuable practice for answering technical questions; it's one thing to program on your own, but a very different experience to write code under pressure during an interview. In particular, I tend to get overwhelmed by problem-solving questions that aren't even that hard to solve with a clear mind. Prior to next term, I hope to practice more so that I don't feel as stressed out while I am in the interview itself.

All in all, I ended up receiving five offers this term and it came down to deciding between what I wanted to work on. I'm really excited to be working at BlackBerry next term on one of the mobile development teams! After working at a small company last term, I'm looking forward to working at a bigger company and seeing how the team environment and workflow differ. Traditionally, BlackBerry has been focused on both software and hardware, but they are transitioning more towards software development now so I am already anticipating the projects that I'll be working on. As I was hoping to work on mobile development next term, I'm really excited for this opportunity to gain valuable work experience and learn a lot throughout the next term.