My Google Journey (1)
Day 1 (5/22/17)
Activities:
Tech Intern Orientation and some IT setup
What I learned today:
- You can definitely tell when a company truly lives up to its values. For example, Google truly values the comfort and accessibility for its employees to the point that there’s Expectant Mother parking near each building!
- Google has a crazy number of resources and opportunities for their employees (too many to list…).
- It’s very easy to go overboard on the free food.
- Make sure to ask your internship hosts/managers/leaders how long you should spend troubleshooting a problem before seeking help. This would have saved me a lot of trouble and frustration in my past 2 internships.
Reflection:
I feel incredibly blessed to be counted amongst such amazingly smart people. I find myself surrounded by freshmen through seniors from Ivy Leagues and their equivalents across the country, while ASU is still widely seen as “the party school.” While it’s very easy to get caught up in the imposter syndrome, though, I’ll do my best not to let it get to my head.
Google has a special program that acts like Tinder for setting and matching lunch dates for employees looking to expand their network. For now, I think I’ll aim to go beyond my comfort zone by trying to sign up for one of those or a 1:1 with someone else once a week.
I finally feel at home in a place where everyone is obsessed with constantly learning and seeking out new knowledge in all kinds of ways. I hope that I can set aside some time this summer to not only pursue my own projects, but to also take advantage of the many learning opportunities here.
