I'm a 2011 Computer Science undergraduate at University of Waterloo. My background includes internships at IBM, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. I suppose I am an entrepreneur: in my free time, I like dreaming ideas and creating things (e.g Kurrently, Mama Translation). One of the craziest things I did was participate in the 7 Cubed Project. Not too many people know about this, but I was Time's Person of the Year in 2006. I use to tumblog videos and pictures, but now I do that through Facebook (subscribe!).
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
This is a multi-part series summarizing my college life. Before this, there were Prelude, Mountaintop, Nadir, Formation, and Doldrums.
These posts are naturally becoming shorter and shorter. I say naturally because experiences always seem longer the first time around. By the n-th work term though, everything feels like a breeze.
That’s not to say that I didn’t learn anything. Every work term taught me something about the strengths, weaknesses, and culture of a company. More importantly, I learned a little more about myself: what I enjoy and what I don’t.
Microsoft hires half a thousand summer interns every year and I was one of them in 2010.
Before the term started however, I spent a few days working on a little search engine called Kurrently. The silly project brought me moments of fame. It was a glimpse of what I wanted, but I ditched the project anyways. There were a number of competitors, and all of them were going to spend more time and money developing their products. I wanted to focus on work, school, and other ideas.
Having suffered through other big corporations, my expectations for Microsoft were low. Once again, time at work became hours to forget. Unresponsiveness, bureaucratic security policies, and stubbornness turned what should have been a three week project into a fourteen week ordeal. To add insult to injury, a few online lectures on Machine Learning near the end of the term made me realize that many ML techniques would’ve helped my project tremendously. Unfortunately, nobody recognized my project as one related to Machine Learning. Either that, or they didn’t think an intern would have the time and know-how to solve the problem using said techniques.
I tried more than usual to meet the other Microsoft interns but bumped into circumstances I did not foresee. On multiple occasions, certain seemingly sociable individuals fell dead silent when I talked to them. And when another Asian and I were isolated at a bar table after a California kickball game, I grimaced at the idea that being Asian can still set you apart from being American.
At the same time, the stories I heard about other interns seemed hardly mature… drinking and driving, car racing friends, slipping weed into someone’s food on his last day, yelling at a colleague for speaking Singlish too loudly…. Only by the end of the term did I see that these are the typical things college students do. I shouldn’t expect any better - even if the college students in question are the cream of the crop.
Nevertheless, I ended up meeting a number of friendly, respectable individuals that term - almost all of them were Canadian. For the first time, I was able to grasp the cultural divide between the two countries.
At home, I enjoyed a large house with four wonderful roommates. Interesting drama arose when my landlord was accused of child abuse and my landlady decided I should know about it. I left before I could be further embroiled.
Once back at school, I was determined to expand my social circle. I lined up an internship at San Francisco startup ContextLogic, a summer internship at Facebook, and an exchange to Tsinghua University.
My career was approaching and I was stepping hard on the gas pedal.
