Blog Post 10

Entry #10

Prompt: Write a final reflection of the entire internship experience.

Date(s): 07/26 - 07/27

Activities: Learning and coding in Python

Technical Information: Anaconda distribution of Python

Reflection:

Overall, the internship was a great experience. Learning through the AOIT classes taught me a lot, but typing standard programs from a textbook can only teach you so much. Learning a brand new programming language while figuring out how to approach a relatively complicated problem gave me a deeper understanding of the language in a short amount of time, unlike a programming course. The internship was essentially a crash course in Python while exposing me to real world business scenarios.

Apart from the learning, the internship was also a fun experience. Talking to my supervisor during our lunches together about everything ranging from quantum computers to his time in college is something I will always remember. Though I am unsure specifically what I want to do in the future, this internship has bolstered my interest in Computer Science and its applications in the world. I now know that participating in internships can be very rewarding, and I plan to intern again in college.

Blog Post 9

Entry #9

Prompt: What major problems or frustrations have you experienced or observed in your work? How did you handle it?

Date(s): 07/24 - 07/25

Activities: Learning and coding in Python

Technical Information: Anaconda distribution of Python

Reflection:

There were times when I was stuck in my programs, which can be attributed to my inexperience in python. At times like this, it helped to take a break and just look up the documentation and observe simple implementations of the code and tweak them to see how it affects the results, and then later revisit my assignment. When this didn’t work, I asked my supervisor for help and he would show me some examples of how to do it but allowed me to try it myself without giving me the answer directly.

Blog Post 8

Entry #8

Prompt: What have you learned about yourself and what you want in a career?

Date(s): 07/20 - 07/23

Activities: Learning and coding in Python

Technical Information: Anaconda distribution of Python

Reflection:

As I mentioned earlier, I have always been interested in Computer Science, but I wasn’t too sure about what it is I truly wanted to do in the future. This internship experience reinforced that interest and now I’m more certain about my career path. However, I am also interested in science, so for my career I will likely implement computers into a science field, or explore machine learning or Artificial Intelligence. Computers are a part of every field nowadays, so finding a job should not be an issue no matter where I go, and I know I’ll enjoy what I’m doing.

Blog Post 7

Entry #7

Prompt: How has this experience affected or changed your career/college plans?

Date(s): 07/18 - 07/19

Activities: Learning and coding in Python

Technical Information: Anaconda distribution of Python

Reflection:

I always had a keen interest in computers, but I was worried a job in the IT field would be boring and tiresome. However, this internship showed me that even in the IT field there are topics that are very interesting to me like machine learning and automation. I want to explore more of this in college, and also explore Artificial Intelligence. This is why I selected to work towards a bachelor's degree in Computer Science in many of the colleges I applied to, and I look forward to doing more internships while I’m in college to gain a greater exposure in the field.

Blog Post 6

Entry #6

Prompt: How have your duties changed since you first started? Have you been given more responsibility?

Date(s): 07/16 - 07/17

Activities: Learning and coding in Python

Technical Information: Anaconda distribution of Python

Reflection:

At the start of the internship, I was just responsible for simple tasks and getting familiar with the python language. I wrote code for simple programs and researched the documentation. Once I was familiar with the language, we started to work on the main objective, and I was given a larger amount of work to accomplish independently. However my supervisor was very helpful whenever I needed assistance on the program, and pointed me in the right direction so I can continue working on it.

Blog Post 5

Entry #5

Prompt: What do you feel is your main contribution to your internship? What have you done at your internship that makes you proud? Why?

Date(s): 07/12 - 07/13

Activities: Learning and coding in Python

Technical Information: Anaconda distribution of Python

Reflection:

My main contribution in the internship was writing the program that analyzes the customer support complaints and categorizes them for how likely a customer is describing a certain problem. Prior to the internship, I hadn’t given much thought to real world business problems. Introducing the problem and implementing the solution was an invaluable learning experience for me. My assignment tied in to the company’s goal to automate everything, as manually reading and addressing every complaint would be time consuming and inefficient. This program would allow the company to quickly respond to their customers with helpful links and tips to FAQs or quick solutions to known issues.

Blog Post 4

Entry #4

Prompt: How is the internship meeting or not meeting your expectations/objectives and why? Do you have control of this? Explain.

Date(s): 07/10 - 07/11

Activities: Learning and coding in Python

Technical Information: Anaconda distribution of Python

Reflection:

The internship exceeded my expectations in how much I learnt during the process, as I learnt and got comfortable with a new programming language in a matter of weeks. I had control over how much I learnt, as I was often allowed to explore the language on my own and I spent a lot of time reading the documentation and doing simple tasks to become better at coding in python.

One thing I wish I had more exposure to and control over was how many people I worked with, as I only worked with my supervisor during the internship. I would have liked to talk to and collaborate with multiple coworkers and had a greater exposure to a corporate environment.

Blog Post 3

Entry #3

Prompt: How have your classroom experiences prepared you for the internship? What do you wish you had learned prior to the internship?

Date(s): 07/06 - 07/09

Activities: Learning and coding in Python

Technical Information: Anaconda distribution of Python

Reflection:

AOIT has enabled me to take a lot of programming classes over the years, which helped immensely when I had to quickly pick up a new programming language. My familiarity with programming and the general concepts of functions, loops, and conditional statements, enabled me to simply focus on learning the syntax rather than learning how to code for the first time. However, python is quite different from C# or Java, which are object oriented languages. Java is free format, which means that whitespace doesn’t affect the code. This is a huge contrast to python, where whitespace and indentation matters greatly. I came to know that the AOIT cohorts after us are getting some exposure in python early in their AOIT courses, which is something I would have liked to learn as well and would have been helpful in my internship. However with the help of my supervisor I quickly caught on and it wasn’t too much of a hinderance.

Blog Post 2

Entry #2

Prompt: Describe the work atmosphere. How are decisions made, is it cooperative or competitive, what is the dress code and work ethic of the organization?

Date(s): 07/04 - 07/05

Activities: Learning and coding in Python

Technical Information: Anaconda distribution of Python

Reflection:

I worked independently and with Vineet for the most part, so the environment was very cooperative, as my supervisor would often help me and point me in the right direction whenever I needed it. Python was a new language for me when I first started, so my supervisor was very helpful in gradually increasing the complexity of my work until I started working on our main task. He often allowed me to play with the language and figure out the syntax for myself and to look up the documentation, however on the major steps towards our goal he worked closely with me. As for the dress code, we often dressed relatively casually. I would often wear pants and a polo to his place. We often sat together and discussed the tasks at hand and came to a decision together before proceeding to tackle the work.

Blog Post 1

Entry #1

Prompt: Define the purpose of the business/organization – what they do, structure, who are their customers, etc. What is your job description – what will you be doing, who will you work with, where do you fit in, etc.?

Date(s): 07/02 - 07/03

Activities: Learning and coding in Python

Technical Information: Anaconda distribution of Python

Reflection:

Hexaware Technologies is a company that is heavily invested in the automation, cloud based technologies, and improving customer experiences. They are a global company with employees and clients across the globe, and are based in India. They specialize in converting everything to a cloud based system, so it can be accessed anywhere and improves their ability to help their clients. Their focus on creating autonomous solutions to everyday problems enables them to respond to them faster and more easily. My work in the internship was geared towards this goal of automation.

In my internship, I was working with my supervisor (Vineet). I worked on a machine learning algorithm to categorize the nature of a problem submitted in customer support complaints. This was to be accomplished by analyzing how often certain keywords were mentioned in the messages left by the customers, and comparing them to the other complaints to observe trends. We would then them by the likeliness that it falls under a certain type of problem. For example, for the issue of a computer not turning on, customers could describe the issue in numerous ways, like “the screen is blank” or “my computer is dead.” By analyzing a large amount of these complaints we can predict the nature of the problem and potentially resolve them faster.