My time Interning at Chalk.com
This past summer we hosted two interns here at Chalk.com. Yash Shah was a fantastic addition to our team and we absolutely loved working with him. We learned a lot and he says he did too! As a parting gift he wrote this great blog post about his experience here (we gave him one of our limited and desirable blue Chalk.com hoodies).
I had mixed feelings before starting my internship at Chalk.com. I was super excited that I would be getting to do the thing I love (software development) but at the same time I was also very nervous because this was my FIRST real job EVER…
Around 4 months ago, I became part of Chalk.com’s engineering team, and I was thrilled to be in the position to work on some innovative products with some amazing people. I joined as a web developer, and my main responsibility was contributing to their assessment tool called Markboard. Markboard allows teachers to grade assessments, mark rubrics, and manage their students’ performance.
Working at a software company can get challenging, especially if you don’t hail from a technical background. Fortunately, I had gained some knowledge in website design prior to my internship. This not only helped me land the job, but it also allowed me to easily adapt to the work. The first few weeks were sort of slow in that they involved things like going into the codebase and understanding the file structure, database, and coding styles. After learning more about our system, I dived right into coding with the help of my colleagues.
The next thing I knew, I was writing thousands of lines of code a day at a pace that required a six-pack of Red Bull every hour. Just kidding, it wasn’t that intense; I’m just trying to paint you a stereotypical startup picture. That doesn’t really happen. Well, maybe on Mr. Robot it does.
Things did eventually start moving rapidly. I began producing more code and by this point my responsibilities had expanded to creating features such as profile pages for a teacher’s students, introducing the ability to comment on their performance, and attaching files to their profile to name a few. Suddenly, days were turning into weeks… weeks into months and so forth. And now, I am writing this as my parting gift.
Work started getting more challenging as I was faced with harder problems to solve. But it got me more excited. What made the experience even better was that everyone on my team knew a lot about web development so I could just ask any one of them pretty much anything, and they’d know how to solve it — often because they ran into similar issues in the past.
Make no mistake. A startup is a fast paced environment, and working at one means that you have to take ownership of your own work. No one will be looking over your shoulder making sure you are doing your job every day. Changes can happen rapidly. You may be working on one feature of a product for a week only to completely scrap it the next day. One of the most important things I learned was that individuals working at a startup need to be fully invested. Many startups don’t even last a year, and there is no certainty that you will still be up and running the following year. You are living in the now and it’s a make-it-or-break-it situation.
Aside from the work, I enjoyed the breaks, particularly because they were a time for us to unwind and get to know each other’s personal side. For example, big tech companies often have famous musicians come to play for them, but we were lucky enough to have our very own designer/virtuoso who just crushed it on the guitar. His name is Kevin Lee.
Also, If you decide to drop by our office, just keep your head up because we have a licensed Nerf sharp shooter who goes by the name of Matt Rae. Good luck!
In all seriousness, this opportunity served as a fantastic and extremely important start to my career. It was a great experience for a number of reasons. The main thing, of course, was that I acquired relevant work experience. I also developed transferable skills such as team-work, time management, and problem-solving that will help me during my future work terms, and later in life.
My belief is that you need to find a source of inspiration and pride that makes you happy to get up every morning and do your job. I found mine by knowing that the products I help build will assist teachers across the globe to make their daily lives easier, and allow them to focus on things that really matter… STUDENTS, like me!!!
As I conclude, I would like to leave you with this timeless sentiment from Steve Jobs. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
Thank you.
Originally published on August 31, 2015.
