My Bloc Internship Experience
Throughout my time at Bloc, I’ve made several portfolio projects. These practical applications reinforced the Bloc curriculum and made me a stronger developer. In order to complete the program, I had to contribute to an open-source project. The opportunity arose for me to join the Bloc team as an intern in order to fulfill this requirement, and it was the best decision I could have made! Not only was I able to contribute to a project, but I was also contributing to a platform that I have spent the last year learning on.
Going into the internship, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was confident in the skills I had learned from Bloc, but I had never worked on a real-world application before. After loading the application locally, I realized the size of the application was much larger than anything I had ever worked on. My first task was simple and involved adding myself to Bloc’s ‘About’ page. Although this wasn’t hard to do, I did find myself spending more time than normal trying to navigate through the application to find which file corresponded to what I needed. At this point, imposter syndrome started setting in. I thought to myself, “is it really taking you this long to find one file?” However, the more time I spent on the application the easier it became to find the resources I needed and the thoughts of imposter syndrome began to fade away. Soon after, I began to see my improvements on the Bloc site such as adding timestamps and linking student usernames to their profile. It was the best feeling to see my changes getting published.
There were several lessons that I learned throughout the internship. First, debugging is like following a trail. I’m sure that every developer has had an error that, when fixed, creates another error (or twenty errors). I learned that by following this error-ridden trail, you will eventually lead to the root error. You may even find that by fixing this root error, other bugs get fixed too! I also learned that as a developer, most of your time is spent being stuck. It is important not to get upset or frustrated over a bug and keep a positive attitude. Another thing I took away from the internship is that learning never stops. Not only were my Bloc teammates eager to help me, they were also constantly talking about new techniques or technologies. It was great to see that no matter how talented you may be, there is always room to grow. One of the Bloc engineers, Joe, shared a list of over thirty twitter accounts that helped him improve as an engineer. Another engineer, Levi, sent me a presentation by Jim Weirich and told me to check out his videos. This experience taught me how an engineering team really works. Although everyone is assigned different tasks, the team works as one unit; everyone is willing to help each other for the greater good of the team.
As I begin my job search, I hope to build on the foundations that Bloc has taught me through my internship and the Software Developer Track. Looking back on the entire program, I know that Bloc was the right program for me. Not only did I learn the fundamentals of programming, I got to build amazing projects, and Bloc provided me with real-world experience. I am thankful to so many people at Bloc for helping me make my career change. I know that there are many things that I still need to learn, but I look forward to the challenge of improving my craft every day.
